German society at the close of the Middle Ages

LIBRARY

UNIVERSITY

CALIFORNIA

SAN DIEGO

c

^ociaf ^tce of 1 0e (geformaf ton in (germane

GERMAN SOCIETY

AT THE CLOSE OF

THE MIDDLE AGES

ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS.

GERMAN SOCIETY

AT THE CLOSE OF

THE MIDDLE AGES

BY

E. BELFORT BAX

AUTHOR OF " THE STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION," " THE RELIGION OF

SOCIALISM," "THE ETHICS OF SOCIALISM," "HANDBOOK OF THE

HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY," ETC., ETC.

LONDON

SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO.
1894

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER PAGE

INTRODUCTION, x

I. FIRST SIGNS OF SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS REVOLT, . 43

II. THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT, 92

III. LITERATURE OF REFORMATION PERIOD, . . . 114

IV. FOLKLORE OF THE REFORMATION, .... 139
V. THE GERMAN TOWN, 156

VI. THE REVOLT OF THE KNIGHTHOOD, .... 165

VII. COUNTRY AND TOWN AT THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES, 194

VIII. THE NEW JURISPRUDENCE, 219

APPENDIX A, 231

„ B 260

„ C, 272

PREFACE.

THE work, of which the present volume is the
first instalment, aims at giving English readers
a general view of the social condition and the
popular movements of Germany during the
period known as that of the Reformation. In
accordance with this plan, I have only touched
incidentally upon the theological disputes then
apparently uppermost in the thoughts of men,
or upon the purely political side of things.
They are dealt with merely in so far as they
immediately strike across the path of social and
internal affairs. The present volume, which
has a more general character than its suc-
cessors, deals with a period limited, roughly
speaking, by the closing years of the fifteenth
century on the one side, and by 1525, the year
of the great Peasant rising, on the other. It
contains a narrative of the earlier popular re-
volutionary movements at the close of the
Middle Ages, the precursors of the Peasants'

GERMAN SOCIETY.

War ; and it also deals with the underlying
causes, economic, social and juridical, of the
general disintegration of the time.

The next volume will treat more in detail
the events of the years 1524 to 1526. The
third will contain a history of the Anabaptist
Movement in Central Europe from its rise at
Zwickau in 1522 to its decline after the capture
of Miinster by the Archiepiscopal and Imperial
troops in 1536. The reign of the Saints in
Munster naturally forms the leading feature of
this portion of the work.

As to the sources for the history of the Ger-
many of this period, I have endeavoured to in-
corporate everything available that seemed to
me important for the proper understanding of the
time. The three chief general histories of the
Reformation, Ranke's Geschichte Deutschlands
wahrend der Reformations-Zeit, Janssen's
Geschichte des Deutschen Volkes, and Egel-
haafs Deutsche Geschichte im sechszehnten
Jahrhundert, have, it is scarcely necessary to
say, been laid under contribution. The stand-
point of Ranke, whose history is detailed and

PREFACE. ix

in certain respects exhaustive, is that of general
bourgeois Philistinism. Janssen represents the
Ultramontane Catholic view; but, apart from its
tendency, every one must admire the brilliant
and in most cases accurate scholarship that
characterises it. Egelhaaf s work may be re-
garded as the counterblast to Janssen's. Its point
of view is that of "liberal," middle-class German
Protestantism; but it also contains many hints
and clues which may be followed up by the
industrious historian.

To rewrite history in the light of the re-
searches of the later decades of the nineteenth
century will be the great task of the next two
or three generations. History has to be pre-
sented afresh on the basis of primitive com-
munism with its tribal and village groups, with
its sexual relations based on the gens, with its
totemistic religious conceptions, and from the
standpoint of a continuous development from
these beginnings up to the individualism of the
present day founded on the complete disruption
of early society.

The average student of any historical period

GERMAN SOCIETY,

invariably reads into his interpretation the in-
tellectual, moral and social atmosphere that lies
nearest to him. He cannot strip away the
intervening time-content between himself and
the period in question. It is the most difficult
of all exercises of the imagination, and to most
men, indeed, impossible, to realise that the
same words, names, customs and institutions
connote totally different actualities in different
stages of historic evolution. People fail to
conjure up the altered perspective, and the
unfamiliar background on which men lived,
thought and felt in another age. Agamemnon,
" King of Men," is to them Kaiser Wilhelm
differently made up. Lykurgos is a cross be-
tween Pitt and Dr. Johnson. Cicero is a Sir
Charles Russell who happened to live in the
first century B.C. The formal continuity of
names, notions or things hides from them the
"true inwardness" of the rupture between the
old and the new which has gradually accom-
plished itself. Change in human affairs is of
course ceaseless ; but it is only when it has
reached a certain stage that it is borne in upon

PREFACE. xi

the consciousness of men in general, and, even
then, it is only the sharp summits above the
changing horizon that they recognise. The
ground out of which these spring is not seen,
and hence the true bearing of the summits
themselves is not understood.

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS OF THE GERMAN
REFORMATION.

INTRODUCTION.

THE close of the fifteenth century had left the
whole structure of mediaeval Europe to all
appearance intact. Statesmen and writers like
Philip de Commines had apparently as little
suspicion that the state of things they saw
around them, in which they had grown up and
of which they were representatives, was ever
destined to pass away, as Lord Palmerston or
any other statesman of the Cobden-Bright
period had that the existing system of society,
say in 1860, was at any time likely to suffer
other changes than those of detail. Society
was organised on the feudal hierarchy of status.
In the first place, a noble class, spiritual and
temporal, was opposed to a peasantry either
wholly servile or but nominally free. In addi-
tion to this opposition of noble and peasant
there was that of the township, which, in its

GERMAN SOCIETY.

corporate capacity, stood in the relation of lord
to the surrounding peasantry.

The township in Germany was of two
kinds — first of all, there was the township that
was k< free of the Empire," that is, that held
nominally from the Emperor himself (Reick-
stadt), and secondly, there was the township
that was under the domination of an inter-
mediate lord. The economic basis ojl_the
whole was still land ; the status of a man or
of a corporation was determined by the mode in
which they held their land. " No land without
a lord " was the principle of mediaeval polity ;
just as " money has no master " is the basis of
the bourgeois world with its self-made men.
Every distinction of rank in the feudal system
was still denoted for the most part by a special
costume. It was a world of knights in armour,
of ecclesiastics in vestments and stoles, of
lawyers in robes, of princes in silk and velvet
and cloth of gold, and of peasants in laced shoe,
brown cloak, and cloth hat.

But although the whole feudal organisation
was outwardly intact, the thinker who was
watching the signs of the times would not have
been long in arriving at the conclusion that

INTR OD UCTION.

feudalism was " played out," that the whole
fabric of mediaeval civilisation was becoming
dry and withered, and had either already begun
to disintegrate or was on the eve of doing so.
Causes of change had within the past half-
century been working underneath the surface
of social life, and were rapidly undermining the
whole structure. The growing use of fire-arms
in war ; the rapid multiplication of printed
books; the spread of the new learning after
the taking of Constantinople lrTT453,~and the
subsequent diffusion of Greek teachers through-
out Europe ; the surely and steadily increasing
communication with the new world, and the
consequent increase of the precious metals ;
and, last but not least, Vasco de Gama's dis-
covery of the new trade route from the East
by way of the Cape — all these were indications
of the fact that the death-knell of the old order
of things had been struck.

Notwithstanding the apparent outward in-
tegrity of the system based on land tenures,
land was ceasing to be the only form of produc- v™-4
tive wealth. Hence it was losing the exclusive
importance attaching to it in the earlier period
of the Middle Ages. The first form of modern

GERMAN SOCIETY.

capitalism had already arisen. Large aggrega-
tions of capital in the hands of trading companies
were becoming common. The Roman law was
establishing itself in the place of the old custom-
ary tribal law which had hitherto prevailed in the
manorial courts, serving in some sort as a bul-
wark against the caprice of the territorial lord ;
and this change facilitated the development of
the bourgeois principleof^private, jis opposed to
, communal^ property. In intellectual matters,
though theology still maintained its supremacy
as the chief subject of human interest, other in-
terests were rapidly growing up alongside of it,
the most prominent being the study of classical
literature.

Besides these things, there was the dawning
interest in nature, which took on, as a matter of
course, a magical form in accordance with tradi-
tional and contemporary modes of thought.
In fact, like the flicker of a dying candle in
its socket, the Middle Ages seemed at the
beginning of the sixteenth century to exhibit
all their own salient characteristics in an exag-
gerated and distorted form. The old feudal
relations had degenerated into ablood-suckingop-
pression; the old rough brutality, into excogitated

INTRODUCTION.

and elaborated cruelty (aptly illustrated in the
collection of ingenious instruments preserved
in the Torture-tower at Niirnberg) ; the old crude
superstition, into a systematised magical theory
of natural causes and effects ; the old love of
pageantry, into a lavish luxury and magnificence
of which we have in the " field of the cloth
of gold " the stock historical example ; the old
chivalry, into the mercenary bravery of the
soldier, whose trade it was to fight, and who
recognised only one virtue — to wit, animal
courage. Again, all these exaggerated char-
acteristics were mixed with new elements,
which distorted them further, and which fore-
shadowed a coming change, the ultimate issue
of which would be their extinction and that of
the life of which they were the signs.

The growing tendency towards centralisation
and the consequent suppression or curtailment
of the local autonomies of the Middle Ages in
the interests of some kind of national govern-
ment, of which the political careers of Louis
XI. in France, of Edward IV. in England, and
of Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain were such
conspicuous instances, did not fail to affect in a
lesser degree that loosely connected political

GERMAN SOCIETY.

system of German States known as the Holy
Roman Empire. Maximilian's first Reichstag
in 1495 caused to be issued an imperial edict
suppressing the right of private warfare claimed
and exercised by the whole noble class from
the princes of the Empire down to the meanest
knight. In the same year the Imperial Chamber
(Reickskammer) was established, and in 1501
the Imperial Aulic Council. Maximilian also
organised a standing army of mercenary troops,
called Landesknechte. Shortly afterwards Ger-
many was divided into imperial districts called
circles (Kreise], ultimately ten in number, all of
which were under a Reichsregiment, which had
at its disposal a military force for the punish-
ment of disturbers of the peace. But the
public opinion of the age, conjoined with the
particular circumstances, political and economic,
of central Europe, robbed the enactment in a
great measure of its immediate effect. High-
way plundering and even private war was still
going on, to a considerable extent, far into the
sixteenth century. Charles V. pursued the
same line of policy ; but it was not until after
the suppression of the lower nobility in 1523,
and finally of the peasants in 1526, that any

INTRODUCTION.

material change took place ; and then the cen-
tralisation, such as it was, was in favour of
the princes, rather than of the imperial power,
which, after Charles V.'s time, grew weaker and
weaker. The speciality about the history of
Germany is, that it has not known till our own
day centralisation on a national or racial scale
like England or France.

At the opening of the sixteenth century
public opinion not merely sanctioned open
plunder by the wearer of spurs and by the
possessor of a stronghold, but regarded it as
his special prerogative, the exercise of which
was honourable rather than disgraceful. The
cities certainly resented their burghers being
waylaid and robbed, and hanged the knights
whenever they could ; and something like a
perpetual feud always existed between the
wealthier cities and the knights who infested
the trade routes leading to and from them.
Still, these belligerent relations were taken as
a matter of course ; and no disgrace, in the
modern sense, attached to the occupation of
highway robbery.

In consequence of the impoverishment of
the knights at this period, owing to causes

GERMAN SOCIETY.

with which we shall deal later, the trade or
profession had recently received an accession
of vigour, and at the same time was carried
on more brutally and mercilessly than ever
before. We will give some instances of the

o

sort of occurrence which was by no means
unusual. In the immediate neighbourhood of
Nlirnberg, which was bien entendu one of the
chief seats of the imperial power, a robber-
knight leader, named Hans Thomas von Abs-
berg, was a standing menace. It was the cus-
tom of this ruffian, who had a large following,
to plunder even the poorest who came from the
city, and, not content with this, to mutilate his
victims. In June, 1522, he fell upon a wretched
craftsman, and with his own sword hacked off
the poor fellow's right hand, notwithstanding
that the man begged him upon his knees to
take the left, and not destroy his means of
earning his livelihood. The following August
he, with his band, attacked a Niirnberg tanner,
whose hand was similarly treated, one of his
associates remarking that he was glad to set to
work again, as it was "a long time since they
had done any business in hands ". On the same
occasion a cutler was dealt with after a similar

INTROD UCTION.

fashion. The hands in these cases were col-
lected and sent to the Biirgermeister of Niirn-
berg, with some such phrase as that the sender
(Hans Thomas) would treat all so who came
from the city. The princes themselves, when
it suited their purpose, did not hesitate to offer
an asylum to these knightly robbers. With
Absberg were associated Georg von Giech and
Hans Georg von Aufsess. Among other not-
able robber-knights of the time may be men-
tioned the Lord of Brandenstein and the Lord
of Rosenberg. As illustrating the strictly pro-
fessional character of the pursuit, and the
brutally callous nature of the society practising
it, we may narrate that Margaretha von Bran-
denstein was accustomed, it is recorded, to give
the advice to the choice guests round her board
that when a merchant failed to keep his promise
to them, they should never hesitate to cut off
both his hands. Even Franz von Sickingen,
known sometimes as the " last flower of German
chivalry," boasted of having among the intimate
associates of his enterprise for the rehabilitation
of knighthood many gentlemen who had been
accustomed to " let their horses on the high
road bite off the purses of wayfarers ". So

io GERMAN SOCIETY.

strong was the public opinion of the noble class
as to the inviolability of the privilege of high-
way plunder that a monk, preaching one day
in a cathedral and happening to attack it as
unjustifiable, narrowly escaped death at the
hands of some knights present amongst his
congregation, who asserted that he had
insulted the prerogatives of their order.
Whenever this form of knight-errantry was
criticised, there were never wanting scholarly
pens to defend it as a legitimate means of aris-
tocratic livelihood ; since a knight must live in
suitable style, and this was often his only
resource for obtaining the means thereto.

The free cities, which were subject only to
imperial jurisdiction, were practically inde-
pendent republics. Their organisation was a
microcosm of that of the entire Empire. At
the apex of the municipal society was the Bur-
germeister and the so-called " Honorability "
(Ehrbarkeif), which consisted of the patrician
gentes, (in most cases) those families which
were supposed to be descended from the origi-
nal chartered freemen of the town, the old
Mark-brethren. They comprised generally the
richest families, and had monopolised the

INTRODUCTION.

entire government of the city, together with
the right to administer its various sources of in-
come and to consume its revenue at their plea-
sure. By the time, however, of which we are
writing the trading guilds had also attained to
a separate power of their own, and were in
some cases ousting the burgher-aristocracy,
though they were very generally susceptible
of being manipulated by the members of the
patrician class, who, as a rule, could alone sit in
the Council (Ratk}. The latter body stood, in
fact, as regards the town, much in the relation
of the feudal lord to his manor. Strong in their
wealth and in their aristocratic privileges, the
patricians lorded it alike over the townspeople
and over the neighbouring peasantry, who were
subject to the municipality. They forestalled
and regrated with impunity. They assumed
the chief rights in the municipal lands, in many
cases imposed duties at their own caprice, and
turned guild privileges and rights of citizenship
into a source of profit for themselves. Their
bailiffs in the country districts forming part of
their territory were often more voracious in their
treatment of the peasants than even the nobles
themselves. The accounts of income and ex-

GERMAN SOCIETY.

penditure were kept in the loosest manner, and
embezzlement clumsily concealed was the rule
rather than the exception.

The opposition of the non-privileged citizens,
usually led by the wealthier guildsmen not
belonging to the aristocratic class, operated
through the guilds and through the open
assembly of the citizens. It had already fre-
quently succeeded in establishing a representa-
tion of the general body of the guildsmen in a
so-called Great Council (Grosser Ratfi), and in
addition, as already said, in ousting the " hon-
orables " from some of the public functions.
Altogether the patrician party, though still
powerful enough, was at the opening of the
sixteenth century already on the decline, the
wealthy and unprivileged opposition beginning
in its turn to constitute itself into a quasi-aristo-
cratic body as against the mass of the poorer
citizens and those outside the pale of municipal
rights. The latter class was now becoming an
important and turbulent factor in the life of the
larger cities. The craft-guilds, consisting of the
body of non-patrician citizens, were naturally
in general dominated by their most wealthy
section.

INTR OD UCTION. 1 3

We may here observe that the development
of the mediaeval township from its earliest begin-
nings up to the period of its decay in the sixteenth
century was almost uniformly as follows : 1 At
first the township, or rather what later became
the township, was represented entirely by the
group tfgentes or group-families originally settled
within the mark or district on which the town
subsequently stood. These constituted the
original aristocracy from which the tradition of
the Ehrbarkeit dated. In those towns founded
by the Romans, such as Trier, Aachen, and
others, the case was of course a little different.
There the origin of the Ehrbarkeit may possibly
be sought for in the leading families of the
Roman provincials who were in occupation of
the town at the coming of the barbarians in the
fifth century. Round this nucleus there gradu-
ally accreted from the earliest period of the
Middle Ages the freed men of the surrounding
districts, fugitive serfs, and others who sought
that protection and means of livelihood in a
community under the immediate domination of

1 We are here, of course, dealing more especially with
Germany ; but substantially the same course was followed in
the development of municipalities in other parts of Europe.

1 4 GERMAN SOCIETY.

a powerful lord, which they could not otherwise
obtain when their native village-community had
perchance been raided by some marauding noble
and his retainers. Circumstances, amongst
others the fact that the community to which
they attached themselves had already adopted
commerce and thus become a guild of merchants,
led to the differentiation of industrial functions
amongst the new-comers, and thus to the estab-
lishment of craft-guilds.

Another origin of the townsfolk, which must
not be overlooked, is to be found in the attend-
ants on the palace-fortress of some great over-
lord. In the early Middle Ages all such mag-
nates kept up an extensive establishment, the
greater ecclesiastical lords no less than the
secular often having several palaces. In
Germany this origin of the township was
furthered by Charles the Great, who estab-
lished schools and other civil institutions, with
a magistrate at their head, round many of the
palaces that he founded. " A new epoch,"
says Von Maurer, " begins with the villa-founda-
tions of Charles the Great and his ordinances
respecting them, for that his celebrated capitu-
laries in this connection were intended for his

INTRODUCTION. 15

newly established villas is self-evident. In
that proceeding he obviously had the Roman
villa in his mind, and on the model of this he
rather further developed the previously existing
court and villa constitution than completely re-
organised it. Hence one finds even in his new
creations the old foundation again, albeit on a
far more extended plan, the economical side of
such villa-colonies being especially more com-
pletely and effectively ordered." l The expres-
sion " Palatine," as applied to certain districts,
bears testimony to the fact here referred to.
As above said, the development of the township
was everywhere on the same lines. The aim of
the civic community was always to remove as
far as possible the power which controlled them.
Their worst condition was when they were im-
mediately overshadowed by a territorial magnate.
When their immediate lord was a prince, the area
of whose feudal jurisdiction was more extensive,
his rule was less oppressively felt, and their con-
dition was therefore considerably improved. It
was only, however, when cities were " free of
the Empire " (Reicksfrei] that they attained the
ideal of mediaeval civic freedom.

^Einkitung, pp. 255, 256.

1 6 GERMAN SOCIETY.

It follows naturally from the conditions
described that there was, in the first place, a
conflict between the primitive inhabitants as
embodied in their corporate society and the
territorial lord, whoever he might be. No
sooner had the township acquired a charter
of freedom or certain immunities than a new
antagonism showed itself between the ancient
corporation of the city and the trade-guilds,
these representing the later accretions. The
territorial lord (if any) now sided, usually though
not always, with the patrician party. But the
guilds, nevertheless, succeeded in ultimately
wresting many of the leading public offices
from the exclusive possession of the patri-
cian families. Meanwhile the leading men
of the guilds had become hommes arrives.
They had acquired wealth, and influence which
was in many cases hereditary in their family,
and by the beginning of the sixteenth century
they were confronted with the more or less
veiled and more or less open opposition of the
smaller guildsmen and of the newest comers
into the city, the shiftless proletariat of serfs
and free peasants, whom economic pressure was
fast driving within the walls, but who, owing to

INTRODUCTION. 17

the civic organisation having become crystallised,
could no longer be absorbed into it. To this
mass may be added a certain number of im-
poverished burghers, who, although nominally
within the town organisation, were oppressed
by the wealth of the magnates, plebeian and
patrician.

The number of persons who, owing to the
decay, or one might almost say the collapse,
of the strength of the feudal system, were
torn from the old moorings and left to drift
about shiftless in a world utterly unprepared to
deal with such an increase of what was practically
vagabondage, was augmenting with every year.
The vagrants in all Western European countries
had never been so numerous as in the earlier
part of the sixteenth century. A portion of
these disinherited persons entered the service
of kings and princes as mercenary soldiers, and
thus became the first germ of the modern stand-
ing army. Another portion entered the begging
profession, which now notably on the Continent
became organised in orthodox and traditional
form into guilds, each of which had its master
and other officers. Yet another portion sought
a more or less permanent domicile as journey-

i8 GERMAN SOCIETY.

men craftsmen and unskilled labourers in the
cities. This fact is noteworthy as the first in-
dication of the proletariat in modern history.
" It will be seen," says Friedrich Engels,1 " that
the plebeian opposition of the then towns con-
sisted of very mixed elements. It united the
degenerate components of the old feudal and
guild organisation with the as yet undeveloped
and new-born proletarian element of modern
bourgeois society in embryo. Impoverished
guildsmen there were, who through their privi-
leges were still connected with the existing
civic order on the one side, and serving-men
out of place who had not as yet become prole-
tarians on the other. Between the two were
the " companions " (Gesellen) for the nonce out-
side the official society, and in their position
resembling the proletariat as much as was
possible in the then state of industry and under
the existing guild-privilege. But, nevertheless,
almost all of them were future guild-masters by
virtue of this very guild-privilege."1 A note-

1 Der Bauernkrieg, p. 31.

2 The three grades in the craft-guilds were those of ap-
prentice, companion, and master. Every guildsman was
supposed to pass through them.

INTR OD UCTION. 1 9

worthy feature of municipal life at this time was
the difficulty and expense attendant on entry
into the city organisation even for the status of
a simple citizen, still more for that of a guilds-
man. Within a few decades this had enor-
mously increased.

The guild was a characteristic of all mediaeval
life. On the model of the village-community,
which was originally based on the notion of kin-
ship, every interest, craft, and group of men
formed itself into a " brotherhood " or " guild ".
The idea of individual autonomy, of individual
action independent altogether of the community,
is a modern idea which never entered the
mediaeval mind. As we have above remarked,
even the mendicants and vagabonds could not
conceive of adopting begging as a career except
under the auspices of a beggars' guild. The
guild was not like a modern commercial syndi-
cate, an abstract body united only by the thread
of one immediate personal interest, whose
members did not even know each other. His
guild-membership interpenetrated the whole
life, religious, convivial, social and political, of
the mediaeval man. The guilds were more or

20 GERMAN SOCIETY.

less of the nature of masonic societies, whose
concerns were by no means limited to the mere
trade-function that appeared on the surface.
" Business " had not as yet begun to absorb the
whole life of men. The craft or " mystery" was
a function intimately interwoven with the whole
concrete social existence. But it is interesting to
observe among the symptoms of transition char-
acterising the sixteenth century, as noted above,
the formation of companies of merchants apart
from ajid outside the old^ guild-organisation.
These latter really seem a kind of foreshadow-
ing of the rings, trusts, and joint-stock com-
panies of our own day. Many and bitter were the
complaints of the manner in which prices were
forced up by these earliest examples of the capit-
alistic syndicate, which powerfully contributed to
the accumulation of wealth at one end of the scale
and to the intensification of poverty at the other.1
The rich burgher loved nothing better than
to display an ostentatious profusion of wealth
in his house, in his dress, and in his entertain-
ments. On the clothing and ornamentation of
himself and his family he often squandered
what might have been for his ancestor of the
1 See Appendix A.

INTR OD UCTION. 2 1

previous century the fortune of a lifetime.
Especially was this the case at the Reichstags
and other imperial assemblies held in the various
free cities at which all the three feudal estates
of the Empire were represented. It was the
aim of the wealthy councillor or guild-master
on these occasions to outbid the princes of the
Empire in the magnificence of his person and
establishment. The prince did not like to be
outdone, and learnt to accustom himself to
luxuries, and thereby to indefinitely increase his
own expenditure. The same with all classes.

The knighthood or smaller nobles, no longer
content with homely fare, sought after costly
clothing, expensive food and exotic wines, and
to approach the affluent furnishing of the city
magnate. His one or two horses, his armour,
his sword and his lance, his homespuns made
almost invariably on his estates, the wine grown
in the neighbourhood, his rough oatmeal bread,
the constituents of which had been ground at his
own mill, the venison and wild fowl hunted by
himself or by his few retainers, no longer sufficed
for the knight's wants. In order to compass his
new requirements he had to set to work in two
ways. Formerly he had little or no need of

22 GERMAN SOCIETY.

money. He received, as he gave, everything
in kind. Now that he had to deal with the
beginnings of a world-market, money was a
prime necessity. The first and most obvious
way of getting it was to squeeze the peasant on
his estate, who, bitten by the new mania, had
also begun to accumulate and turn into cash the
surplus products of labour on his holding. From
what we have before said of the ways and man-
ners of the knighthood, the reader may well
imagine that he did not hesitate to " tower" the
recalcitrant peasant, as it was called, that is, to
throw him into his castle-dungeon if other
means failed to make him disgorge his treasure
as soon as it came to his lord's ears that he
had any. But the more ordinary method of
squeezing the peasant was by doubling and
trebling the tithes and other dues, by imposing
fresh burdens (many of them utterly unwarranted
by custom) on any or no pretext. The princes,
lay and ecclesiastic, applied the same methods
on a more extended scale. These were often
effected in an ingenious manner by the ecclesias-
tical lords through the forging of manorial rolls.
The second of the methods spoken of for
" raising the wind " was the mortgaging of

INTRODUCTION. 23

castle and lands to the money-lending syndicates
of the towns, or, in the case of the greater
princes, to the towns themselves in their cor-
porate capacity. The Jews also came in for
their share of land-mortgages. There were,
in fact, few free or semi-free peasants whose
lands were not more or less hypothecated.
Meanwhile prices rose to an incredible extent
in a few years.

Such were the causes and results of the
change in domestic life which the economic
evolution of the close of the Middle Ages was
now bringing about amongst all classes.

The ecclesiastical lords, or lords spiritual,
differed in no way in their character and conduct
from the temporal princes of the Empire. In
one respect they outdid the princes, namely,
in the forgery of documents, as already men-
tioned. Luxury had, moreover, owing to the com-
munication which they had with Rome and thus
indirectly with the Byzantine civilisation, already
begun with the prelates in the earlier Middle
Ages. It now burst all bounds. The ecclesiastical
courts were the seat of every kind of debauchery.
As we shall see later on, they also became the
places where the new learning first flourished.

24 GERMAN SOCIETY.

But in addition to the general luxury in which
the higher ecclesiastics outdid the lay element
of the Empire, there was a special cause which
rendered them obnoxious alike to the peasants,
to the towns, and to their own feudatory nobles.
This special cause was the enormous sum payable
to Rome for the Pallium or Investiture, a tax
that had to be raised by the inhabitants of the
diocese on every change of archbishop, bishop,
or abbot. In addition thereto the entire income
of the first year after the investiture accrued to
the Papal Treasury under the name of Annates.
This constituted a continuous drain on the
ecclesiastical dependencies and indirectly on
the whole Empire. There must also be added
the cost of frequent journeys to Rome, where
each dignitary during his residence held court
in a style of sumptuous magnificence. All
these expenses tended to drain the resources of
the territories held as spiritual fiefs in a more
onerous degree than happened to other terri-
tories. Moreover, the system of the sale of
indulgences or remissions for all sins committed
up to date was now being prosecuted to an ex-
tent never heard of before with a view to meet
the increased expenditure of the Papal See, and

INTR OD UCTJON. 2 5

especially the cost of completing the cathedral
of St. Peter's at Rome. Thus by a sort of
voluntary tax the wealth of Germany was still
further transferred to Italy. Hence can readily
be seen the reason of the venomous hatred
which among all classes of the Empire had been
gradually accumulating towards the Papacy for
more than a generation, and which ultimately
found expression in Luther's fulminations.

The peasant of the period was of three kinds :
the leibeigener or serf, who was little better than
a slave, who cultivated his lord's domain, upon
whom unlimited burdens might be fixed, and
who was in all respects amenable to the will of
his lord ; the horiger or villein, whose services
were limited alike in kind and amount ; and the
freier or free peasant, who merely paid what
was virtually a quit-rent in kind or in money
for being allowed to retain his holding or status
in the rural community under the protection of
the manorial lord. The last was practically the
counterpart of the mediaeval English copyholder.
The Germans had undergone essentially the
same transformations in social organisation as
the other populations of Europe.

The barbarian nations at the time of their

26 GERMAN SOCIETY.

great migration in the fifth century were or-
ganised on a tribal and village basis. The
head man was simply primus inter pares.
In the course of their wanderings the success-
ful military leader acquired powers and assumed
a position that was unknown to the previous
times, when war, such as it was, was merely
inter-tribal and inter-clannish, and did not in-
volve the movements of peoples and federa-
tions of tribes, and when, in consequence, the
need for permanent military leaders or for the
semblance of a military hierarchy had not arisen.
The military leader now placed himself at the
head of the older social organisation, and asso-
ciated with his immediate followers on terms
approaching equality. A well-known illustra-
tion of this is the incident of the vase taken
from the Cathedral of Rheims, and of Chlodo-
wig's efforts to rescue it from his independent
comrades-in-arms.

The process of the development of the feudal
polity of the Middle Ages is, of course, a
very complicated one, owing to the various
strands that go to compose it. In addition
to the German tribes themselves, who moved
en masse, carrying with them their tribal and

INTRODUCTION. 27

village organisation, under the over-lordship
of the various military leaders, were the indi-
genous inhabitants amongst whom they settled.
The latter in the country districts, even in many
of the territories within the Roman Empire,
still largely retained the primitive communal
organisation. The new-comers, therefore, found
in the rural communities a social system already
in existence into which they naturally fitted,
but as an aristocratic body over against the
conquered inhabitants. The latter, though
not all reduced to a servile condition, never-
theless held their land from the conquering
body under conditions which constituted them
an order of freemen inferior to the new-
comers.

To put the matter briefly, the military leaders
developed into barons and princes, and in some
cases the nominal centralisation culminated as in
France and England in the kingly office ; while,
in Germany and Italy, it took the form of the
revived imperial office, the spiritual over-lord of
the whole of Christendom being the Pope, who
had his vassals in the prince-prelates and sub-
ordinate ecclesiastical holders. In addition to
the princes sprung originally from the military

28 GERMAN SOCIETY.

leaders of the migratory nations, there were
their free followers, who developed ultimately
into the knighthood or inferior nobility ; the
inhabitants of the conquered districts forming a
distinct class of inferior freemen or of serfs. But
the essentially personal relation with which the
whole process started soon degenerated into
one based on property. The most primitive
form of property — land — was at the outset what
was termed allodial, at least among the con-
quering race, from every__ social j[roup having
the possession, under the trusteeship of its head
man, of the land on which it settled. Now,
owing to the necessities of the time, owing to
the need of protection, to violence and to re-
ligious motives, it passed into the hands of the
over-lord, temporal or spiritual, as his posses-
sion ; and the inhabitants, even in the case
of populations which had not been actually
conquered, became his vassals, villeins, or serfs,
as the case might be. The process by means
of which this was accomplished was more
or less gradual ; indeed, the entire extinction
of communal rights, whereby the notion of
private ownership is fully realised, was not uni-
versally effected even in the west of Europe

INTRODUCTION. 29

till within a measurable distance of our own
time.1

From the foregoing it will be understood
that the oppression of the peasant, under the
feudalism of the Middle Ages, and especi-
ally of the later Middle Ages, was viewed by
him as an infringement of his rights. During
the period of time constituting mediaeval history
the peasant, though he often slumbered, yet
often started up to a sudden consciousness of his
position. The memory of primitive communism
was never quite extinguished, and the continual
peasant-revolts of the Middle Ages, though im-
mediately occasioned, probably, by some fresh in-
vasion, by which it was sought to tear from the
" common man " yet another shred of his surviv-
ing rights, always had in the background the ideal,
vague though it may have been, of his ancient free-
dom. Such, undoubtedly, was the meaning of the
Jacquerie in France, with its wild and apparently
senseless vengeance ; of the Wat Tyler revolt
in England, with its systematic attempt to em-
body the vague tradition of the primitive village

1 Cf. Von Maurer's Einleitung zur Geschichte der Mark-
Verfassung ; Gomme's Village Communities ; Stubbs' Con-
stitutional History.

30 GERMAN SOCIETY.

community in the legends of the current eccle-
siastical creed ; of the numerous revolts in
Flanders and North Germany ; of the Hussite
movement in Bohemia, under Ziska ; of the
rebellion led by George Doza in Hungary ; and,
as we shall see in the body of the present work,
of the social movements of Reformation Ger-
many, in which, with the partial exception of
Ket's rebellion in England a few years later, we
may consider them as coming to an end.

For the movements in question were distinctly
the last of their kind. The civil wars of religion
in France, and the great rebellion in England
against Charles the First, which alsoassumed
a religious colouring, open a new era in popular
revolts. In the latter, particularly, we have
clearly before us the attempt of the new middle
class of town and country, the independent citi-
zen, and the now independent yeoman, to assert
its supremacy over the old feudal estates or
orders. The new conditions had swept away
the revolutionary tradition of the mediaeval
period, whose golden age lay in the past with I
its communal-holding and free men with equal
rights on the basis of the village organisation-
rights which with every century the peasant

INTR OD UCTION. 3 1

felt more and more slipping away from him.
The place of this tradition was now taken
by an ideal of individual freedom, apart from
any social bond, and on a basis merely politi-
cal, the way for which had been prepared
by that very conception of individual pro-
prietorship on the part of the landlord,
against which the older revolutionary senti-
ment had protested. A most powerful in-
strument in accommodating men's minds to
this change of view, in other words, to the es-
tablishment of the new individualistic principle,
was the Roman or Civil law, which, at the
period dealt with in the present book, had be-
come the basis whereon disputed points were
settled in the Imperial Courts. In this respect
also, though to a lesser extent, may be men-
tioned the Canon or Ecclesiastical law, — consist-
ing of papal decretals on various points which
were founded partially on the Roman or Civil law,
— a juridical system which also fully and indeed
almost exclusively recognised the individual
holding of property as the basis of civil society
(albeit not without a recognition of social duties
on the part of the owner).

Learning was now beginning to differen-

32 GERMAN SOCIETY.

tiate itself from the ecclesiastical profession,
and to become a definite vocation in its various
branches. Crowds of students flocked to the
seats of learning, and, as travelling scholars,
earned a precarious living by begging or " pro-
fessing " medicine, assisting the illiterate for a
small fee, or working wonders, such as casting
horoscopes, or performing thaumaturgic tricks.
The professors of law were now the most influ-
ential members of the Imperial Council and of
the various Imperial Courts. In Central Europe,
as elsewhere, notably in France, the civil lawyers
were always on the side of the centralising
jpower, alike against the local jurisdictions^and
against the peasantry.

i he effects ot the~conquest of Constantinople
in 1453, and the consequent dispersion of the
accumulated Greek learning of the Byzantine
Empire, had, by the end of the fifteenth cen-
tury, begun to show themselves in a notable
modification of European culture. The circle
of the seven sciences, the Quadrivium, and the
Trivium, in other words, the mediaeval system
of learning, began to be antiquated. Scholastic
philosophy, that is to say, the controversy of
the Scotists and the Thomists, was now

INTRODUCTION. 33

growing out of date. Plato was extolled at
the expense of Aristotle. Greek, and even
Hebrew, was eagerly sought after. Latin
itself was assuming another aspect ; the Renais-
sance Latin is classical Latin, whilst Mediaeval
Latin is dog- Latin. The physical universe now
began to be inquired into with a perfectly fresh
interest, but the inquiries were still conducted
under the segis of the old habits of thought.
The universe was still a system of mysterious
affinities and magical powers to the investigator
of the Renaissance period, as it had been before.
There was this difference, however : it was now
attempted to systematise the magical theory of
the universe. While the common man held a
store of traditional magical beliefs respecting
the natural world, the learned man deduced
these beliefs from the Neo-Platonists, from the
Kabbala, from Hermes Trismegistos, and from
a variety of other sources, and attempted to
arrange this somewhat heterogeneous mass of
erudite lore into a system of organised thought.
The Humanistic movement, so called, the
movement, that is, of revived classical scholarship,
had already begun in Germany before what may
be termed the sturm und drang of the Renais-

3

34 GERMAN SOCIETY.

sance proper. Foremost among the exponents
of this older Humanism, which dates from the
middle of the fifteenth century, were Nkholas of
Cusa and his disciples, Rudolpj^ Agrjcola. Alex-
ander Hegius and Jacob Wimpheling. But the
new Humanism and the new Renaissance move-
ment generally throughout Northern Europe
centred chiefly in two personalities, Johannes
Reuchlin and Desiderius Erasmus. Reuchlin
was the founder of the new Hebrew learning,
which up till then had been exclusively confined
to the synagogue. It was he who unlocked the
mysteries of the Kabbala to the Gentile world.
But though it is for his introduction of Hebrew
study that Reuchlin is best known to posterity,
yet his services in the diffusion and popularisa-
tion of classical culture were enormous. The
dispute of Reuchlin with the ecclesiastical autho-
rities at Cologne excited literary Germany from
end to end. It was the first general skirmish
of the new and the old spirit in Central and
Northern Europe. But the man who was des-
tined to become the personification of the
Humanist movement, as the new learning-
was called, was Erasmus. The illegitimate
son of the daughter of a Rotterdam burgher,

INTRODUCTION. 35

he early became famous on account of his
erudition, in spite of the adverse circum-
stances of his youth. Like all the scholars of
his time, he passed rapidly from one country to
another, settling finally in Basel, then at the
height of its reputation as a literary and typo-
graphical centre. The whole intellectual move-
ment of the time centres round Erasmus, as is
particularly noticeable in the career of Ulrich von
Hutten, dealt with in the course of this history.
As instances of the classicism of the period, we
may note the uniform change of the patronymic
into the classical equivalent, or some classicism
supposed to be the equivalent. Thus the name
Erasmus itself was a classicism of his father's
name Gerhard, the German name Muth be-
came Mutianus, Trittheim became Trithemius,
Schwarzerd became Melanchthon, and so on.

We have spoken of the other side of the
intellectual movement of the period. This
other side showed itself in mystical attempts at
reducing nature to law in the light of the tradi-
tional problems which had been set, to wit,
those of alchemy and astrology : the discovery
of the philosopher's stone, of the transmutation
of metals, of the elixir of life, and of the corre-

3 6 GERMAN SOCIETY.

spondences between the planets and terrestrial
bodies. Among the most prominent exponents
of these investigations may be mentioned Philip-
pus von Hohenheim or Paracelsus, and Cor-
nelius Agrippa of Nettesheim, in Germany,
Nostrodamus, in France, and Cardanus, in Italy.
These men represented a tendency which was
pursued by thousands in the learned world. It
was a tendency which had the honour of being
the last in history to embody itself in a distinct
mythical cycle. " Doctor Faustus " may pro-
bably have had a historical germ ; but in any
case " Doctor Faustus," as known to legend and
to literature, is merely a personification of the
practical side of the new learning. The minds
of men were waking up to interest in nature.
There was one man, Copernicus, who, at least
partially, struck through the traditionary at-
mosphere in which nature was enveloped, and
to his insight we owe the foundation of astrono-
mical science ; but otherwise the whole intellec-
tual atmosphere was charged with occult views.
In fact, the learned world of the sixteenth cen-
tury would have found itself quite at home in the
pretensions and fancies of our Jin de siecle theo-
sophists, with their notions of making miracles

INTRODUCTION. 37

non-miraculous, of reducing the marvellous to
being merely the result of penetration on the
part of certain seers and investigators of the
secret powers of nature. Every wonder-worker
was received with open arms by learned and un-
learned alike. The possibility of producing that
which was out of the ordinary range of natural
occurrences was not seriously doubted by any.
Spells and enchantments, conjurations, calcu-
lations of nativities, were matters earnestly in-
vestigated at universities and courts. There
were, of course, persons who were eager to
detect impostors : and amongst them some of
the most zealous votaries of the occult arts
—for example, Trittheim and the learned
Humanist, Conrad Muth or Mutianus, both of
whom professed to have regarded Faust as a
fraud. But this did not imply any disbelief in
the possibility of the alleged pretensions. In
the Faust-myth is embodied, moreover, the
opposition between the new learning on its
physical side and the old religious faith. The
theory that the investigation of the mysteries of
nature had in it something sinister and diabo-
lical which had been latent throughout the
Middle Ages was brought into especial promi-

38 GERMAN SOCIETY.

nence by the new religious movements. The
popular feeling that the line between natural
magic and the black art was somewhat doubtful,
that the one had a tendency to shade off into the
other, now received fresh stimulus. The notion
of compacts with the devil was a familiar one,
and that it should be resorted to for the purpose
of acquiring an acquaintance with hidden lore
and magical powers seemed quite natural.

It will have already been seen from what we
have said that the religious revolt was largely
economical in its causes. The intense hatred,
common alike to the smaller nobility, the
burghers and the peasants, of the ecclesiastical
hierarchy, was obviously due to its ever-increas-
ing exactions. The sudden increase in the sale
of indulgences, like the proverbial last straw,
broke down the whole system ; but any other
incident might have served the purpose equally
well. The prince-prelates were, in some in-
stances, at the outset, not averse to the move-
ment ; they would not have been indisposed to
have converted their territories into secular fiefs
of the Empire. It was only after this hope had
been abandoned that they definitely took sides
with the Papal authority.

INTRODUCTION. 39

The opening of the sixteenth century thus
presents to us mediaeval society, social, political
and religious, "run to seed". The feudal or-
ganisation was outwardly intact ; the peasant,
free and bond, formed the foundation ; above
him came the knighthood or inferior nobility ;
parallel with them was the Ehrbarkeit of the
less important towns, holding from mediate
lordship ; above these towns came the free
cities, which held immediately from the Empire,
organised into three bodies, a governing Coun-
cil in which the Ehrbarkeit usually predomi-
nated, where they did not entirely compose it,
a Common Council composed of the masters of
the various guilds, and the General Council of
the free citizens. Those journeymen, whose
condition was fixed from their being outside the
guild-organisations, usually had guilds of their
own. Above the free cities in the social
pyramid stood the Princes of the Empire,
lay and ecclesiastic, with the Electoral Col-
lege, or the seven Electoral Princes, forming
their head. These constituted the feudal "es-
tates " of the Empire. Then came the King
of the Romans ; and, as the apex of the
whole, the Pope in one function and the

40 GERMAN SOCIETY.

Emperor in another crowned the edifice. The
supremacy, not merely of the Pope, but of the(
complementary temporal head of the mediaeval/
polity, the Emperor, was acknowledged in ^yj"
shadowy way, even in countries such as Francq
and England, which had no direct connection! X
with the Empire. For, as the spiritual powei \
was also temporal, so the temporal politica
power had, like everything else in the Middle
Ages, a quasi-religious significance.

The minds of men in speculative matters, in
theology, in philosophy, and in jurisprudence,
were outgrowing the old doctrines, at least in
their old forms. In theology the notion of sal-
vation by the^ faith of the individual, and not
through the fact of Kplonging to a corporate
organisation, which was the mediaeval concep-
tion, was latent in the minds of multitudes of
religious persons before expression was given
to it by Luther. The aversion to scholasticism,
bred by . the revived knowledge of the older
Greek philosophies in the original, produced
a curious amalgam ; but scholastic habits of
thought were still dominant through it all.
The new theories of nature amounted to little
more than old superstitions, systematised and

INTRODUCTION. 41

reduced to rule, though here and there the later
physical science, based on observation and ex-
periment, peeped through. In jurisprudence
the epoch is marked by the final conquest of
the Roman rivil 1aw) in its spirit, where not in
its forms, over the old customs, pre-feudal
and feudal. This motley world of decayed
knights, lavish princes, oppressed and rebellious
peasants, turbulent townsmen, licentious monks
and friars, mendicant scholars and hireling
soldiers, is the world some of whose least-
known aspects we are about to consider in the
following pages.

CHAPTER I.

FIRST SIGNS OF SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS REVOLT.

THE echoes of the Hussite movement in Bohe-
mia spread far and wide through Central Europe
at the beginning of the fifteenth century. It
was not in vain that Ziska bequeathed his skin
for the purposes of a drum, since the echoes of its
beating made themselves heard for many a year
in Bohemia and throughout Central Europe.
The disciples of the movement settled in dif-
ferent countries, and became centres of propa-
ganda, and the movement attached itself to the
peasants' discontent. Amid the various stir-
rings that took place, there are one or two that
may arrest our attention owing to their import-
ance and their typical character.

It was in the year 1476, when Rudolph of
Scherenberg occupied the Episcopal See of
Wurzburg, that a cowherd, named Hans Bo-
heim, of the neighbouring village of Niklashau-
sen, who was accustomed to pipe and to drum at

local festivities, at places on the banks of the

(43)

44 GERMAN SOCIETY.

little stream called the Tauber, was suddenly
seized with an inspiration of preaching for the
conversion of his neighbours from their sins.
It appeared to him that his life had been hither-
to sinful ; he gave up all participation in village
feasts, he became a dreamer, and announced that
he had had visions of the Virgin. In the middle
of Lent he proclaimed that he had been given
a divine mission from the Mother of God herself
to burn his pipe and drum and to devote himself
entirely to preaching the Gospel to the common
man. All were to abandon their former way of
life, were to lay aside all personal ornament, and
in humble attire to perform pilgrimages to Nik-
lashausen, and there worship the Virgin as they
esteemed their souls' salvation. In all this there
was nothing very alarming to the authorities.
Peasantly inspirations were by no means un-
known in the Middle Ages ; but the matter as-
sumed another aspect when the new seer, Hans
Pfeifferlein, or "the little piper" as he was nick-
named, announced that the Queen of Heaven
had revealed to him that there should henceforth
be neither Emperor, Pope, Prince, nor any lay
or spiritual authority ; but that all men should
be brothers, earning their bread by the sweat

SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS REVOLT. 45

of their brows, and sharing alike in all things.
There were to be no more imposts or dues ;
land, woods, pastures, and water were to be
free. The new Gospel struck root immedi-
ately. The peasant folk streamed to Niklas-
hausen, from all sides, — men and women, young
and old, journeymen, lads from the plough,
girls from the fields, their sickles in their hands,
without leave of lord or master, and without
preparation of any sort whatever. Food and
the necessary clothing and shelter were given
them by those on the way who had already
embraced the new Kingdom of God. The
universal greeting among the pilgrims was
" brother" and "sister".

This went on for some months, the young
prophet choosing chiefly Sundays and holi-
days for his harangues. Ignorant even of
writing, he was backed by the priest of
Niklashausen, and by perhaps two or three
other influential persons. Many were the
offerings brought to the Niklashausen shrine.
Well nigh all who journeyed thither left some
token behind, were it only a rough peasant's
cap or a wax candle. Those who could afford
it gave costly clothes and jewellery. The pro-

46 GERMAN SOCIETY.

clamation of universal equality was indeed a
Gospel that appealed to the common man ; the
resumption of their old rights, the release from
every form of oppression, as a proclamation
from heaven itself, were tidings to him of great
joy. The prophetic youth was hailed by all
as the new Messiah. After each week's ser-
mon he invited the congregation to return next
week with redoubled numbers ; and his com-
mands were invariably obeyed. Men, women
and children fell on their knees before him, cry-
ing : " Oh, man of God, sent from heaven, have
mercy on us and pity us ". They tore the wool
threads from his shaggy sheepskin cap, regard-
ing them as sacred relics. The priests of the
surrounding districts averred that he was a
sorcerer and devil-possessed, and that a wizard
had appeared to him, clad in white, in the form
of the Virgin, and had instilled into him the
pernicious doctrines he was preaching. In all
the surrounding country his miracles were talked
about. The Bishops of Mainz and Wiirzburg
and the Council of Niirnberg forbade their
villeins, under heavy penalties, from making the
pilgrimage to Niklashausen. But the effect of
such measures only lasted for a short time.

SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS REVOLT. 4?

Finally, on the Sunday before the day of
Saint Kilian, Hans Boheim, on the con-
clusion of his discourse, invited his hearers, as
usual, to come on the next occasion. This
time, however, he ordered men only to appear,
but with arms and ammunition ; women and
children were to be left at home. No sooner
did the tidings of this turn of affairs reach the
ears of the Bishop at Wiirzburg than the latter
resolved to forestall the movement. He sent
thirty-four mounted men-at-arms after nightfall
to Niklashausen ; they burst upon the sleeping
youth, tore him from the house where he lay,
and hurried him to Wiirzburg, bound on horse-
back. But as it was near the end of the week,
4000 pilgrims had already arrived at Niklas-
hausen, and, on hearing the news of the attack,
they hurried after the marauders, and caught
them up close by the Castle of Wiirzburg. One
of the knights was wounded, but his comrades
succeeded in carrying him within the walls.
The peasants failed to effect the intended
rescue. By the Sunday, 34,000 peasants had
assembled at Niklashausen; but the report of the
capture of Boheim had a depressing effect, and
several thousands returned home. There were

48 GERMAN SOCIETY.

nevertheless some among the bands who, insti-
gated probably by Boheim's friend, the parish
priest of Niklashausen, endeavoured to rally the
remaining multitude and incite them to a new
attempt at rescue. One of them alleged that the
Holy Trinity had appeared to him, and com-
manded that they should proceed with their pil-
grim candles in their hands to the Castle of Wlirz-
burg, that the doors would open of themselves,
and that their prophet would walk out to greet
them. About 16,000 followed these leaders,
marching many hours through the night, and
arriving early next morning at the castle with
flaming candles, and armed with the roughest
weapons. Kunz von Thunfeld, a decayed
knight, and Michael, his son, constituted
themselves the leaders of the motley band.
The marshal of the castle received them,
demanding their pleasure. " We require
the holy youth," said the peasants. " Sur-
render him to us, and all will be well ;
refuse, and we will use force." On the mar-
shal's hesitating in his answer, he was greeted
with a shower of stones, which drove him to
seek safety within the walls. The bishop
opened fire on the peasants, but after a short

SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS REVOLT. 49

time sent one of his knights to announce that
the cause of their preacher would be duly con-
sidered at a proper time and place, conjuring
them at the same time to depart immediately
in accordance with their vows. By cajolery
and threats he succeeded in his object ; the
bands raised the siege of the castle, and dis-
persed homewards in straggling parties. The
ruffianly scoundrel no sooner observed that the
unsuspecting peasants were quietly wending
their way home in small bodies, without a
thought of hostilities, than he ordered his
knights to pursue them, to attack them in the
rear, and to murder or capture the ringleaders.
The poor people, nevertheless, defended
themselves with courage against this cowardly
onslaught ; twelve of them were left dead on the
spot ; many of the remainder sought shelter
in the church of the neighbouring village.
Threatened there with fire and sword, they
surrendered, and were brought back to Wiirz-
burg and thrown into the dungeons of the castle.
The majority were liberated before long ; but
the peasant who was alleged to have received the
vision of the Holy Trinity, as well as he who
had wounded the knight on the occasion of the

4

50 GERMAN SOCIETY.

attempt at rescue a few days before, were de-
tained in prison, and on the following Friday
were beheaded outside the castle. Hans Bo-
heim was at the same time burned to ashes.
The leader of the revolt, Kunz von Thunfeld,
a feudatory of the bishop, fled the territory, and
was only allowed to return on his formally
surrendering his lands in perpetuity to the
bishopric. Such was the history of a movement
that may be reckoned as one of the more direct
forerunners of the peasants' war.

In the years 1491 and 1492 occurred the
rising of the oppressed and plundered villeins
of the Abbot of Kernpten. The ecclesiastics
on this domain had exhausted every possible
means of injuring the unfortunate peasants, and
numbers of free villeins had been converted into
serfs by means of forged documents. The im-
mediate cause of the revolt, however, was the
seizure, by the abbot, of the stock of wine of a
peasant who had just died, in addition to the
horse which he was empowered to claim. An
onslaught was made by the infuriated peasants
on the monastery, and the abbot had to retire
to his stronghold, the Castle of Liebenthann,
hard by. The Emperor ultimately intervened,

SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS REVOLT. 51

and effected a compromise. But the first
organised peasant movement took place in
Elsass1 in 1493, and comprised burghers as
well as peasants among its numbers. They
were for the most part feudatories of the Bishop
of Strassburg. By devious paths the members
of this secret organisation were wont to betake
themselves to the hill of Hungerberg, north-
west of the little town of Schlettstadt. The
ostensible objects of the association were com-
plete freedom for the common man, reformation
of the Church in the sense that no priest should
have more than one benefice, the introduction
of a year of jubilee, in which all debts should be
abolished, the extinction of all tithes, dues and
other burdens, and the abolition of the spiritual
courts and the territorial juridical court at Roth-
weil. A Judenhetze also appears amongst the
articles. The leader of this movement was one
Jacob Wimpfeling. The programme and plan
of action was to seize the town of Schlettstadt,

1 We adopt the German spelling of the name of the pro-
vince usually known in this country as Alsace, for the reason
that at the time of which this history treats it had never been
French ; and the French language was probably little more
known there than in other parts of Germany.

52 GERMAN SOCIETY.

to plunder the monastery there, and then by
forced marches to spread themselves over all
Elsass, surprising one town after another. It
would seem that this was the first peasant
movement that received the name of Bimd-
schuh, and the almost superstitious importance
attached to the sign of this kind emblazoned on
the flag is characteristic of the Middle Ages.
The banner was the result of careful delibera-
tions, and the final decision was that as the
knight was distinguished by his spurs, so the
peasant rising to obtain justice for his class
should take as his emblem the common shoe
he was accustomed to wear, laced from the
ankle up to the knee with leathern thongs.
They fondly hoped that the moment this banner
was displayed, all capable of fighting would flock
to the standard, from the villages and smaller
towns.

Just as all was prepared for the projected
stroke, the Bundschuh shared the common fate
of similar movements, and was betrayed ;
and this in spite of the terrible threats that
were held out to all joining, in the event of
their turning traitors. It must be admitted that
there was much folly in the manner in which

SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS REVOLT. 53

many persons were enrolled, and this may have
led to the speedy betrayal. Everybody who
was suspected of having an inkling of the move-
ment was forced to swear allegiance to the secret
league. Immediately on the betrayal, bodies of
knights scoured the country, mercilessly seizing
all suspected of belonging to the conspiracy, and
dragging them to the nearest tribunal, where
they were tortured and finally quartered alive
or hung. Many of the fugitives succeeded in
taking refuge in Switzerland, where they seem
to have been kindly welcomed. But the Bund-
schuh only slept, it was by no means extin-
guished.

In the year 1502, nine years later, the bish-
opric of Speyer, the court of which was noted
for its extravagance and tyranny, had to face
another Bundschuh. This second movement
had able men at its head, and extended over
well nigh all the regions of the Upper and
Middle Rhine. It similarly took the nature of
a conspiracy, rather than of an open rebellion.
Within a few weeks, 7000 men and 400 women
had been sworn into the league, from a large
number of villages, hamlets and small towns, for
the larger towns were purposely left out, the

54 GERMAN SOCIETY.

movement being essentially a peasant one.
The village and mark of Untergrunbach was
its centre. Its object and aim was nothing less
than the complete overthrow of the existing
ecclesiastical and feudal organisation of the
Empire. The articles of the association de-
clared : " We have joined ourselves together in
order that we may be free. We will free our-
selves with arms in our hands, for we would be
as the Swiss. We will root out and abolish all
authorities and lordships from the land, and
march against them with the force of our host
and with well-armed hand under our banner.
And all who do not honour and acknowledge us
shall be killed. The princes and nobles broken
and done with, we will storm the clergy in their
foundations and abbeys. WTe will overpower
them, and hunt out and kill all priests and
monks together." The property of the clergy
and the nobles was to be seized and divided ;
as in the former case, all feudal dues were to be
abolished, the primitive communism in the use
of the land, and of what was on it, was to be
resumed. The pass-word, by means of which
the members of the organisation were known to
one another, was the answer to the question :

SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS REVOLT. 55

" How fares it ? " The question and answer
were in the form of a rhyme : —

" Loset ! Was ist nun fur ein Wesen ? "

" Wir mogen vor Pfaffen und Adel nit genesen."

This may be paraphrased as follows : —

" Well, now ! And how doth it fare ? "

" Of priests and of nobles we've enough and to spare."

The idea was to rise at the opportune moment,
as the Swiss had done, to free themselves of all
intermediate lordship, and to recognise no master
below the King of the Romans and the Emperor.
" Nought but the justice of God " was the motto
of their flag, and their colours were white and
blue. Before the figure of a crucifix a peasant
knelt, and below was depicted a great Bimd-
schuh,\he sign which had now become established
as the symbol of the peasants' movements. With
consummate tact, the leaders of the revolt for-
bade any members to go to confession, and it
was the disregard of this order that led to the
betrayal of the cause. A peasant in confession
revealed the secret to a priest, who in his turn
revealed it to the authorities. Ecclesiastics,
princes, and nobles at once took their measures.
The most barbarous persecution and punish-

56 GERMAN SOCIETY.

ment of all suspected of having been engaged
in the Bundschuh conspiracy followed. Those
concerned had their property confiscated, their
wives and children were driven from the
country, and they themselves were in many
cases quartered alive ; the more prominent
men, by a refinement of cruelty, being dragged
to the place of execution tied to a horse's tail.
A tremendous panic seized all the privileged
classes, from the Emperor to the knight. They
earnestly discussed the situation in no less
than three separate assemblies of the estates.
Large numbers of those involved in this second
Bundschuh managed to escape, owing to the
pluck and loyalty of the peasants. A few
bands were hastily got together, and, although
quite insufficient to effect a successful revolt,
they were able to keep the knightly warriors
and landesknechte at bay at certain critical
points, so as to give the men who had really
been the life and intelligence of the movement
time to escape into Switzerland or into other
territories where they were unknown. In some
cases the secret was so well kept that the local
organisers remained unnoticed even in their
own villages.

SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS REVOLT. 57

For ten years after the collapse of the second
Bundschuh in the Rhenish district, the peasants
remained quiet. It was not till 1512 that things
began again to stir. One of the leaders, who
had escaped notice on the suppression of the
former conspiracy, was Joss Fritz. He was
himself a native of Untergriinbach, which
had been its seat. He there acted as Bann-
wart or ranger of the district lands. For nearly
ten years Joss wandered about from country
to country, but amid all his struggles for exist-
ence he never forgot the Bundschuh. Joss was
a handsome man, of taking and even superior
manners. He was very careful in his dress, some-
times apparelling himself in black jerkin with
white hose, sometimes in red with yellow hose,
sometimes in drab with green hose. He would
seem to have been at one time a landesknecht,
and had certainly taken part in various cam-
paigns in a military capacity. Whether it was
from his martial bearing or the engaging nature
of his personality, it is evident that Joss Fritz
was in his way a born leader of men. About
1512 Joss settled down in a village called
Lehen, a few miles from the town of Freiburg,
in Breisgau. Here he again obtained the

5 8 GERMAN SO CIE TV.

position of Bannwart, and here he began to
seriously gather together the scattered threads
of the old movement, and to collect recruits.
He went to work cautiously ; first of all con-
fining himself to general complaints of the
degeneracy of the times in the village tavern,
or before the doors of the cottagers on summer
evenings. He soon became the centre of an
admiring group of swains, who looked up to
him as the much-travelled man of the world,
who eagerly sought his conversation, and who
followed his counsel in their personal affairs.

As Joss saw that he was obtaining the con-
fidence of his neighbours, his denunciations of
the evils of the time grew more earnest and im-
passioned. At the same time he threw out hints
as to the ultimate outcome of the existing state
of things. But it was only after many months
that he ventured to broach the real purpose of
his life. One day when they were all assembled
round him, he hinted that he might be able to
tell them something to their advantage, would
they but pledge themselves to secrecy. He
then took each individually, and after calming
the man's conscience with the assurance that
the proposal for which he claimed strict secrecy

SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS REVOLT. 59

was an honourable one, he expounded his plan
of an organisation of all the oppressed, an un-
dertaking which he claimed to be in full accord
with Holy Writ. He never insisted upon an
immediate adhesion, but preferred to leave his
man to think the matter over.

Joss would sometimes visit his neighbours in
their houses, explaining to them how all ancient
custom, right and tradition was being broken
through to gratify the rapacity of the ruling
classes. He put forward as the objects of the
undertaking the suppression of the payment of
interest after it had amounted to an equivalent
of the original sum lent ; also that no one was to
be required to give more than one day's service
per year to his lord. "We will," he declared,
" govern ourselves according to our old rights
and traditions, of which we have been forcibly
and wrongfully deprived by our masters. Thou
knowest well," he would continue, "how long
we have been laying our claims before the Aus-
trian Government at Ensisheim." l

1 It will be seen from the historical map that Breisgau
and Sundgau were feudal appanages of the house of Austria.
Ensisheim was the seat of the Habsbtirg overlordship in the
district (not to be confounded with the imperial power).

60 GERMAN SOCIETY.

From speaking of small grievances, Joss was
gradually led to develop his scheme for the over-
throw of feudalism, and for the establishment of
what was tantamount to primitive conditions.
At the same time he gave his hearers a ren-
dezvous at a certain hour of eventide in a
meadow, called the Hardmatte, which lay out-
side the village, and skirted a wood. The still-
ness of the hour, broken only by the sounds of
nature hushing herself to rest for the night,
was, at the time appointed, invaded by the
eager talk of groups of villagers. All his little
company assembled, Joss Fritz here, for the
first time, fully developed his schemes. In
future, said he, we must see that we have no
other lords than God, the Pope, and the Em-
peror ; the Court at Rothweil, he said, must be
abolished ; each must be able to obtain justice
in his native village, and no churchman must
be allowed to hold more than one benefice ; the
superfluity of the monasteries must be distributed
amongst the poor ; the dues and imposts with
which the peasants are burdened must be re-
moved ; a permanent peace must be established
throughout Christendom, as the perpetual feuds
of the nobles meant destruction and misery for

SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS REVOLT. 61

the peasants ; finally, the primitive communism
in woods, pasture, water, and the chase must
be restored.

Joss Fritz's proposals struck a sympathetic
chord in the hearts of his hearers. It was
only when he wound up by insisting upon the
necessity of forming a new Bvndsckuh that
some few of them hung back and went to ob-
tain the advice of the village priest on the
matter. Father John (such was his name) was,
however, in full accord in his ideas with Joss,
and answered that the proposals were indeed a
godly thing, the success of which was foretold
in the Scriptures themselves.

The meetings on the Hardmatte led to the
formation of a kind of committee, composed of
those who were most devoted to the cause.
These were Augustin Enderlin, Kilian Mayer,
Hans Freuder, Hans and Karius Heitz, Peter
Stublin, Jacob Hauser, Hans Hummel — Hum-
mel hailed from the neighbourhood of Stuttgart
— and Hieronymus, who was also a stranger,
a journeyman baker working at the mill of
Lehen, who had travelled far, and had acquired
a considerable fund of oratory. All these men
were untiring in their exertions to obtain re-

62 GERMAN SOCIETY.

cruits for the new movement. After having
prepared the latter's minds, they handed over
the new-comers to Joss for deeper initiation,
if he thought fit. It was not in crusades and
pilgrimages he taught them, but in the Bund-i
schuh that the " holy sepulchre " was to be»
obtained. The true " holy sepulchre " was to
be found, namely, in the too long buried
liberties of the people. The new Bundschuh,
he maintained, had ramifications extending as
far as Cologne, and embracing members from
all orders.

Joss Fritz had indeed before coming to
Lehen travelled through the Black Forest and
the district of Speyer, in the attempt, by no
means altogether unsuccessful, to reunite the
crushed and scattered branches of the old Bund-
schuh. Among the friends he had made in this
way was a poor knight of the name of Stoffel,
of Freiburg. The latter travelled incessantly
in the cause ; he was always carefully dressed,
.and usually rode on a white horse. The mis-
sionaries of the Bundschuh, under the direction
of Joss Fritz, assumed many different charac-
ters; now they were peasants, now townsmen,
now decayed knights, according to the localities

SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS REVOLT. 63

they visited. The organisation of the move-
ment was carried out on lines which have been
since reproduced in the Fenian rising. It was
arranged in " circles," the members of which
knew one another, but not those outside the
" circle". Even the beggars' guild was pressed
into the service, and very useful adjuncts the
beggars were, owing to their nomadic habits.
The heads of the " circles " communicated with
each other at intervals as to the number of re-
cruits and as to the morale of their members.
They compared notes with the two leaders of
the movement, Joss and his friend Stoffel, both
of whom rode constantly from place to place
to keep their workers up to the mark. The
muster-roll would be held on these occasions,
as at Lehen itself, after dark, and in some
woodland glade, near the village. The village
taverns, generally the kitchens of some better-
to-do peasant, were naturally among the best
recruiting grounds, and the hosts themselves
were often heads of "circles". Strange and
picturesque must have been these meetings
after night- fall, when the members of the
"circle" came together, the peasants in their
plain blue or grey cloth and buff leather, the

64 GERMAN SOCIETY.

leaders in what to us seem the fantastic cos-
tumes of the period, red stockings, trunk-hose
and doublet slashed with bright yellow, or the
whole dress of yellow slashed with black, the
slouch hat, with ostrich feather, surmounting
the whole ; the short sword for the leaders, and
a hoe or other agricultural implement for the
peasant, constituted the arms of the company.

There was a visible sign by which the breth-
ren recognised each other : it was a sign in
the form of the letter H, of black stuff in a
red field, sewn on to the breast-cloth. There
appears also to have been another sign which
certain of the members bore instead of the
above ; this consisted of three cross slits or
slashes in the stuff of the right sleeve. This
Bundschuh, like the previous one in Unter-
grunbach, had its countersign, which, to the
credit of all concerned, be it said, was never
revealed, and is not known to this day. The
new Bnndschuh was now thoroughly organised
with all its officers, none of whom received
money for their services.

The articles of association drawn up were
the result of many nightly meetings on the
Hardmatte, and embodied the main points

SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS REVOLT. 65

insisted upon by Joss in his exhortations to
the peasants. They included the abolition of
all feudal powers. God, the Pope, and the
Emperor were alone to be recognised as
hayfng authority. The Court at Rothweil
and[_all_ the ecclesiastical courts were to be
abolished, _and justice relegated to the village
council as of old. The interest payable on
the debts of the mortgaged holdings of the
peasants was to be discontinued. Fishing,
hunting, woods and pasture were to be free to
all. The clergy were to be limited to one
benefice apiece. The monasteries and ecclesi-
astical foundations were to be curtailed, and
their superfluous property confiscated. All
feudal dues were to cease.

The strange and almost totemistic supersti-
tion that the mediaeval mind attached to sym-
bolism is here evinced by the paramount import-
ance acquired by the question of the banner.
A banner was costly, and the Bundschuh was
poor, but the banner was the first necessity of
every movement. In this case, it was obliga-
tory that the banner should have a Bundschuh
inscribed upon it. Artists of that time objected
to painting Bundschuhs on banners ; they were

66 GERMAN SOCIETY,

afraid to be compromised. Hence it was, above
all things, necessary to have plenty of money
wherewith to bribe some painter. Kilian Mayer
gave five vats of wine to a baker, also one of
the brotherhood, in Freiburg, to be sold in that
town. The proceeds were brought to Joss as a
contribution to the banner fund. Many another
did similarly ; some of those who met on the
Hardmatte, however, objected to this tax. But
ultimately Joss managed, by hook or by crook,
to scrape together what was deemed needful.
Joss then called upon a " brother " from a distant
part of the country, one known to no one in
Freiburg, to repair to the latter city and hunt
up a painter. The "brother" was in a state of
dire apprehension, and went to the house of the
painter Friedrich, but at first appeared not to
know for what he had come. With much
hesitation, he eventually gasped out that he
wanted a Bnndschuh painted. Friedrich did
not at all like the proposal, and kicked the
unfortunate peasant into the street, telling him
not to come in future with such questionable
orders. The artist instantly informed the Town
Council of Freiburg of the occurrence ; but as
the latter did not know whence the mysterious

SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS REVOLT. 67

personage had come, nor whither he had gone,
they had to leave the matter in abeyance.
They issued orders, however, for all true and
faithful burghers to be on the look-out for
further traces of the mischief.

After this failure, Joss bethought him that
he had better take the matter in hand him-
self. Now, there was another artist of Frei-
burg, by name Theodosius, who was just then
painting frescoes in the church at Lehen ;
to him Joss went one evening with Hans
Enderlin, a person of authority in the village,
and Kilian Mayer. They invited him to the
house of one of the party, and emptied many
a measure of wine. When they had all drunk
their fill, they went to walk in the garden,
just as the stars were beginning to come out.
Joss now approached the painter with his pro-
ject. He told him that there was a stranger in
the village who wanted a small banner painted
and had asked him (Joss) to demand the cost.
Theodosius showed himself amenable as regards
this point, but wanted to know what was to be
the device on the banner. Directly Joss men-
tioned the word Bundschuh, the worthy painter
gave a start, and swore that not for the wrealth

68 GERMAN SOCIETY.

of the Holy Roman Empire itself would he
undertake such a business. They all saw
that it was no use pressing him any further,
and so contented themselves with threatening
him with dire consequences should he divulge
the conversation that he had had with them.
Hans Enderlin also reminded him that he had
already taken an oath of secrecy in all matters
relating to the village, on his engagement to
do church work, a circumstance that curiously
enough illustrates the conditions of mediaeval
life. The painter, fearful of not receiving his
pay for the church work, if nothing worse,
prudently kept silent.

Joss was at his wits' end. The silk of the
flag was already bought, and even sewn ; blue,
with a white cross in the middle, were the
colours ; but to begin operations before the sign
of the Bundschuh was painted, entered into the
head of no one. In accordance with the cur-
rent belief in magic, the symbol itself was
supposed to possess a virtue, without the aid
of which it was impossible to hope for suc-
cess. There was nothing left for it but for
Joss to start on a journey to the free city
of Heilbronn in Swabia, where he knew

SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS REVOLT. 69

there lived a painter of some ability. Arrived
there, Joss dissembled his real object, pretend-
ing that he was a Swiss, who, when fighting
in a great battle, had made a vow that if he
came out safe and sound, he would undertake
a pilgrimage to Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle), and
there dedicate a banner to the mother of
God. He begged the painter to make a suitable
design for him, with a crucifix, the Virgin and
St. John the Baptist, and underneath a Bimd-
schuh. The Heilbronn artist was staggered at
the latter suggestion, and asked what he meant.
Joss appeared quite innocent, and said that
he was a shoemaker's son from Stein-am-Rhein,
that his father had a Bundschuh as his trade-
sign, and in order that it might be known that
the gift was from him, he wished his family
emblem to appear upon it. Round the flag
were to be the words : " Lord, defend Thy
Divine justice ". These representations over-
came the painter's scruples, and in a few days
the banner was finished. Hiding it under his
doublet, Joss hurried back to Lehen.

At last all was ready for the great coup. The
Kirchweihe (or village festival, held every year
on the name-day of the patron saint of a village

70 GERMAN SOCIETY.

church) was being held at a neighbouring village
on the 1 9th of October. This was the date fixed
for a final general meeting of the conspirators
to determine the plan of attack and to decide
whether Freiburg should be its object, or
some smaller town in the neighbourhood.
The confederates in Elsass were ordered, as
soon as the standard of revolt was raised in
Breisgau (Baden), to move across the Rhine to
Burkheim, where the banner of the league
would be flying. Special instructions were
given to the beggars to spy round the towns
and in all inns and alehouses, and to bring
reports to Lehen. Arrangements were also
made for securing at least one or two adherents
in each of the guilds in Freiburg. All these
orders were carried out in accordance with the
directions made by Joss before his departure.
But whilst he was away the members lost their
heads. When too late they bethought them-
selves to win over an old experienced warrior
who lived in Freiburg, a cousin of one of the
chief conspirators at Lehen. Had they done
so earlier it is likely enough that he would have
been able to secure them possession of the city.
As it happened, things were managed too

SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS REVOLT. 71

hurriedly. Before matters were ripe the chief
men grew careless of all precautions, so confident
were they of success. One of the conspirators
within the city set fire to a stable with a view
to creating a panic, in the course of which the
keys of the city gates might be stolen and the
leaguers admitted. The attempt, however,
was discovered before the fire gained any hold,
and merely put the authorities on the alert.
Again, three members of the league seized
upon a peasant a short distance from the city,
dragged him into a neighbouring wood, and
made him swear allegiance. After he had
done this under compulsion they exposed to
him their intentions as to Freiburg. The
peasant proving recalcitrant, even to the extent
of expressing horror at the proposal, the three
drew their knives upon him, and would have
murdered him when the sound of horses was
heard on the high road close by, and, struck
with panic, they let him go and hid themselves
in the recesses of the wood. The peasant, of
course, revealed all to his confessor the same
evening, and wanted to know whether the oath
he had taken under compulsion was binding on
him. The priest put himself at once in com-

7 2 GERMAN SOCIETY.

munication with the Imperial Commissary of
Freiburg, who made the City Corporation
acquainted with the facts. Two other traitors
a few days after came to the assistance of the
authorities, and revealed many important se-
crets. Count Philip of Baden, their over-lord,
to whom these disclosures were made, was not
long in placing them at the disposal of the
Corporation of Freiburg and of the Austrian
Government at Ensisheim. Late the following
night, October 4, messengers were sent in all
directions to warn the authorities of the neigh-
bouring villages and towns to prepare them-
selves for the outbreak of the conspiracy.
Double watches were placed at the gates of
Freiburg and on all the towers of the walls.
The guilds were called together, and their
members instructed to wake each other up
immediately on the sound of the storm-bell,
when they were all to meet in the cathedral
close. The moment that these preparations
were known at Lehen, a meeting was called
together on the Hardmatte at vespers ; but in
the absence of Joss Fritz, and, as ill-luck would
have it, in that also of one or two of the best
organisers who were away on business of the

SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS REVOLT. 73

league, divided counsels prevailed. In the
very midst of all this, two hundred citizens of
Freiburg armed to the teeth appeared in Lehen,
seized Hans Enderlin and his son, as also Elsa,
the woman with whom Joss had been living,
besides other leading men of the movement.
Panic now reigned amongst all concerned.
Well nigh every one took to flight, most of
them succeeding in crossing the frontier to
Switzerland. The news of the collapse of the
movement apparently reached Joss before he
arrived in Lehen, as there is no evidence of his
having returned there. Many of the conspira-
tors met together in Basel, amongst them being
Joss Fritz with his banner. They decided to
seek an asylum in Zurich. But they were fallen
upon on the way, and two were made prisoners,
the rest, among them Joss, escaping. Those
of the conspirators who were taken prisoners
behaved heroically ; not the most severe tor-
tures could induce them to reveal anything of
importance. As a consequence, comparatively
few of those compromised fell victims to the
vengeance of their noble and clerical enemies.
In Elsass they were not so fortunate as in
Baden, many persons being executed on sus-

74 GERMAN SOCIETY.

picion. The Imperial Councillor Rudolph was
even sent into Switzerland to demand the sur-
render of the fugitives, and two were given up
by Schaffhausen. Joss's mistress was liberated
after three weeks, and she was suspected of
having harboured him at different times after-
wards. The last distinct traces of him are toj
be found in the Black Forest ten years later,
during the great rising ; but they are slight, and
merely indicate his having taken a part in this
movement. Thus this interesting personality
disappears from human ken. Did the energetic
and enthusiastic peasant leader fall a victim to
noble vengeance in 1525, or did he withdraw
from public life to a tranquil old age in some
obscure village of Southern Germany ? These
are questions which we shall now, it is pro-
bable, never be able to answer.

At the same time that the foregoing events
were taking place there was a considerable
ferment in Switzerland. Increase of luxury
was beginning to tell there also. The simple
cloth or sheepskin of the old Eidgenosse was
now frequently replaced, in the towns especially,
by French and Italian dresses, by doublets of
scarlet silk, by ostrich feathers, and even by

SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS REVOLT. 75

cloth of gold. In the cities domestic architec-
ture began to take on the sumptuousness of the
Renaissance style. The coquettish alliance
with Louis XI. in the preceding century had
already opened a way for the introduction of
French customs. Gambling for high stakes
became the fashionable amusement in town and
country alike. The story of Hans Waldmann,
although belonging to a period some years
earlier than that of this history, illustrates a
decline from the primitive simplicity of the
ancient Switzer, a decline which had become
infinitely more accentuated and general at the
time of which we treat. All this led, of course,
to harder conditions for the peasants, which, in
the summer of 1513, issued in several minor
revolts. In some cases, notably in that of the
peasants of Canton Bern, the issue was favour-
able to the insurgents.

In the neighbouring country of Wtirtemberg
an insurrection also burst forth. It is sup-
posed to have had some connection with the
Bundschuh movement at Lehen ; but it took the
name of " The Poor Conrad". It was imme-
diately occasioned by the oppression of Duke
Ulrich of Wiirtemberg, who, to cover the ex-

76 GERMAN SOCIETY.

penses of his luxurious court, was burdening
the peasants with ever-fresh exactions. He
had already made debts to the extent of a
million gulden. The towns, no less than the
peasantry, were indignant at the rapacity and
insolence of the minions of this potentate.
First, an income-tax was imposed without the
concurrence of the estates, which should have
been consulted. Next, an impost was laid on
the daily consumption of meal and wine. The
butchers and millers and vintners were then
allowed to falsify their weights and measures,
on the condition that the greater part of their
increased profits went to the duke. " The
Poor Conrad " demanded the removal of all
these abuses ; and, in addition, the freedom of
the chase, of fishery and of wood-cutting, and
the abolition of villein service. In the towns
the poorer citizens, including both guildsmen
and journeymen, were prepared to seize the
opportunity of getting rid of their Ehrbarkeit.
This movement was also, like the Bundschuh
at Lehen, suppressed for the time being. We
have gone at length into the history of the
Lehen Bundschuh as a type of the manner
in which the peasant movements of the time

SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS REVOLT. 77

were planned and organised. The methods
pursued by " The Poor Conrad," the midnight
meetings, the secret pass-words, the prepara-
tions for sudden risings, were in most respects
similar. The skilled and well-equipped knight-
hood of Duke Ulrich, though inferior in numbers,
readily dispersed the ill-armed and inexperi-
enced bands of peasants whom they encoun-
tered. To this result the treacherous promises
of Duke Ulrich, which induced large numbers of
peasants to lay down their arms, contributed.
The revolt proved a flash in the pan ; and
although those who had partaken in it were
not punished with the merciless severity shown
by the Austrian Government at Ensisheim, it
yet resulted in no amelioration of the conditions
of the people. Many of the leaders, and not a
few of the rank and file, fled the country, and,
as in the case of the Lehen Bundschuh, found a
refuge in Northern Switzerland.

In the autumn of 1517 Baden was once more
the scene of an attempted peasant rising, its
objects being again much the same as were
those of the previous enterprises. Rent and
interest were to be abolished, and no lord
recognised except the Emperor. The plan

78 GERMAN SOCIETY.

was to surprise and capture the towns of
Weissenburg and Hagenau, and to make a
clean sweep of the imperial councillors and
judges, as well as of the knights and nobles.
This conspiracy was, however, also discovered
before the time for action was ripe. There were
also, in various parts of Central Europe, other
minor attempts at revolt and conspiracies which it
is not necessary to particularise here. The great
rebellion of the year 1514, in Hungary, however,
although not strictly coming within the limits of
our subject, deserves a few words of notice.

At Easter, in that year, the whole of Hun-
gary was stirred up by the preaching of a
crusade against the Turks, then hard pressing
the eastern frontier. All who joined the cru-
sade, down to the lowest serf, were promised
not merely absolution, but freedom. The move-
ment was immensely popular, thousands crowd-
ing to the standards. The nobles naturally
viewed the movement with disfavour ; many, in
fact, sallied forth from their castles with their
retinues to fetch back the fugitives. In many
cases the seizures were accompanied with every
circumstance of cruelty. As the news of these
events reached the assembled bands in their

SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS REVOLT. 79

camp, a change of disposition became manifest.
The enthusiasm for vanquishing the Turk
abroad speedily gave way to an enthusiasm for
vanquishing the Turk at home. Everywhere
throughout the camp were heard threats of ven-
geance. Finally, one George Doza, who would
seem to have been a genuine popular hero
in the best sense of the word, placed him-
self at their head. George Doza's aims were
not confined to mere vengeance on the offend-
ing nobles. They extended to the. conception
of a complete reorganisation of the conditions
of the oppressed classes throughout the country.
In vain an order came from the Court at Ofen
for the army to disperse. Doza divided his
forces into five bodies, each of which was to
concentrate its efforts on a definite district, at
the same time summoning the whole popu-
lation to join. The destruction of castles, and
the slaughter of their inmates, became general
throughout the land. For a moment the
nobles seemed paralysed ; but they soon re-
covered themselves, and two of their number,
Johann Zapolya and Johann Boremiszsza, aided
by the inhabitants of the city of Buda-Pesth, got
together an army to save the situation for their

8o GERMAN SOCIETY.

colleagues. They were not long in joining
battle with the insurgents. The latter, deserted
at the beginning by some of their leaders, who
went over to the enemy, fought bravely, but had
eventually to yield to superior arms and discipline.
A large number of prisoners were taken, of whom
the majority were barbarously executed, and the
rest sent home, with ears and noses cut off.

Meanwhile, George Doza, who had been
besieging Szegedin, withdrew his forces, and
gave battle to Bishop Csaky and the Count
of Temeswar, who were advancing with
troops to relieve the town. After two days'
hard fighting, victory rewarded the bravery
of the peasants. Doza's followers demanded
vengeance for their murdered and mutilated
comrades. The bishop was impaled, and the
royal treasurer of the district hanged on a high
gallows. But Doza's was the only division of
the popular army that met with any success.
The rest, on coming to grips with the nobles,
were dispersed and almost annihilated. The
remnants joined the fo rces of their com mander-in-
chief, whose army was thus augmented from day
to day. Doza now issued a decree abolishing
king and higher and lower nobility, deposing all

SOCIAL AND RELIGIO US RE VOL T. 8 r

bishops save one, and proclaiming the equality
of all men before God. One of his lieutenants
then succeeded in recruiting what amounted
to a second army, containing a large force of
cavalry. He moved on Temeswar, but com-
mitted the imprudence of undertaking a long
siege of this powerful fortress. After two
months his army began to get demoralised.
A few days before the place would have
had to surrender, Doza was surprised by
the Transylvanian Army. In spite of this, how-
ever, he deployed his troops with incredible
rapidity, and a terrific battle, long undecided,
ensued. After several hours of hard fighting,
one of the wings of Doza's army took to flight.
General confusion followed, in the midst of
which Doza might have been seen in the fore-
front of the battle like an ancient hero, hewing
down nobles right and left, until his sword
broke in his hand. He was then instantly seized,
and made prisoner in company with his brother
Gregory. The latter was immediately beheaded.
Doza and about forty of his officers were thrown
into a vile dungeon in Temeswar and deprived
of all nourishment. On the fourteenth day of

their incarceration, nine alone remained alive.

6

82 GERMAN SOCIETY.

These nine, Doza at their head, were led out
into the open space before their prison. An
iron throne was erected there and made red
hot, and Doza, loaded with chains, was forcibly
placed upon it. A red-hot iron crown was laid
upon his head, and a red-hot iron sceptre thrust
into his hand. His companions were then
offered their lives on condition that they forth-
with tore off and devoured the flesh of their
leader. Three, who refused with indignation,
were at once hewn in pieces. Six did as they
were bidden. " Dogs ! " cried Doza. This was
the only sound that escaped him. Torn with
red-hot iron pincers, he died. The defeated
peasants were impaled and hanged by the
hundred. It is estimated that over 60,000 of
them perished in this war, and in the reprisals
that followed it. The result of the insurrection
was a more brutal oppression than had ever
been known before.

At the same time various insurrections of a
local nature were taking place in Germany and
in the Austrian territories. Amid the Styrian
and Carinthian Alps there were movements of
the peasants, who, in these remote mountain
districts, seem to have retained more of their

SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS REVOLT. 83

primitive independence. In the south-west
of Austria there were three duchies — Karnthen
(Carinthia), Steuermarck (Styria), and the
Krain. At Karnburg, a short distance from
Klagenfurt, was a round stone, on which were
engraved the arms of the country. When
a. duke assumed the sovereignty, a peasant
belonging to one of the ancient families of a
neighbouring village in which this particular
right was hereditary, attended to offer the new
duke the homage of the peasantry. Round
the stone, on which sat the aged representative
of the rural communities, the peasantry of the
neighbourhood were gathered. The over-lord,
attired in peasantly costume, advanced towards
the stone. With him were two local dignitaries,
one leading a lean black cow, the other an under-
fed horse. Bringing up the rear followed the
remaining nobility and knighthood, with the
banner of the duchy. The peasant who was
sitting on the fateful stone cried : " Who is he
who advances so proudly into our country ? "
The surrounding peasants answered : " It is our
prince who conies ". "Is he a righteous
judge ? " asked the peasant on the stone.
" Will he promote the well-being of our land

84 GERMAN SOCIETY.

and its freedom ? Is he a protector of the
Christian faith and of widows and orphans ? "
The multitude shouted: "This he is, and will
ever be so ". That part of the ceremony con-
cluded, the duke had to take an oath to the
peasant on the stone that he would not dis-
dain, for the welfare of the land, in any of the
respects mentioned, to nourish himself with
such a wretched beast as the cow accompany-
ing him, or to ride on such a lean and ill-
favoured steed. The peasant on the stone
then gave the duke a light box on the ears,
and conjured him in patriarchal fashion to
remain ever a righteous judge and a father to
his people. The old countryman then stood
up, and the nobles surrendered to him the cow
and horse, which he led home as his property.

The above singular custom had been kept
up in Carinthia until the middle of the fifteenth
century, when the Emperor Frederick III.
refused, in his capacity of local lord, to don the
peasant garb, although he compromised the
matter by giving the peasants a deed estab-
lishing them in their ancient freedom. The
growing pressure of taxation and the new
imposts, which the wars of Maximilian entailed,

SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS REVOLT. 85

led, at the beginning of the sixteenth century,
to an agitation here also, and, finally, to a rising
in which, it is said, as many as 90,000 peasants
took part, but which did not immediately come
to a head, owing to timely concessions on the
part of the Emperor. The league of the pea-
sants, in this case, extended over Styria as well
as Carinthia and the Krain. It broke forth
again in the spring of 1517, owing to renewed
oppressions on the part of the nobles. Several
castles, during the three months that the revolt
lasted, were destroyed, and large stretches of
country laid waste. Not a few nobles were
hurled from their own turrets. The Emperor
Maximilian, who, throughout the whole affair,
showed himself not unfavourable to the cause
of the peasants, held his hand, as it would seem,
so long as the latter confined themselves to
punishing the notoriously rapacious among
the territorial magnates ; but afterwards, when
the armed bodies of peasants gradually melted
away, and those that remained lost all discipline,
degenerating into mere plundering bands, he
sent a party of a few hundred knights, who
speedily routed the ill-armed and disorderly
hordes. Little quarter was given to the fugi-

86 GERMAN SOCIETY.

tives, and the usual bloody executions followed.
There was, in addition, a heavy indemnity laid
on the whole peasantry, which took the form of
a perpetual tax. The revolt in the Krain lasted
longest, and was suppressed with the most
bloodshed. Those in Styria and Carinthia
came to an end much sooner, and with less
disastrous results to those who had been en-
gaged in them.

But it was not alone in Germany, or, indeed,
in Central Europe, that a general stirring was
visible among the peasant populations at the
beginning of the sixteenth century. It is true
that the great revolts, the Wat Tyler insurrec-
tion in England, and the Jacquerie in France,
took place long before ; but even when there
was no great movement, sporadic excitement
was everywhere noticeable. In Spain, we read
of a peasant revolt, which Cornelius Agrippa of
Nettesheim was engaged by the territorial lord
to quell by his supposed magical powers. In
England, the disturbances of Henry VIII.'s
reign, connected with the suppression of the
monasteries, are well known. The expropria-
tion of the people from the soil to make room
for sheep-farms also gave occasion to periodical

SO C1AL AND RELIGIO US RE VOL T. 87

disturbances of a local character, which culmin-
ated in 'i 549 in the famous revolt led by John
Ket in East Anglia.

The deep-reaching importance and effective
spread of movements was infinitely greater in
the Middle Ages than in modern times. The
same phenomenon presents itself to-day in bar-
baric and semi-barbaric communities. At first
••sight one is inclined to think that there has been
no period in the world's history when it was so
easy to stir up a population as the present,
with our newspapers, our telegraphs, our postal
arrangements and our railways. But this is
just one of those superficial notions that are not
confirmed by history. We are similarly apt to
think that there was no age in which travel was
so widespread, and formed so great a part of
the education of mankind as at present. There
could be no greater mistake. The true age of
travelling was the close of the Middle Ages, or
what is known as the Renaissance period. The
man of learning, then just differentiated from
the ecclesiastic, spent the greater part of his
life in carrying his intellectual wares from
court to court, and from university to uni-
versity, just as the merchant personally carried

88 GERMAN SOCIETY.

his goods from city to city in an age in which
commercial correspondence, bill-brokers, and the
varied forms of modern business were but in em-
bryo. It was then that travel really meant educa-
tion, the acquirement of thorough and intimate
knowledge of diverse manners and customs.

I Travel was then not a pastime, but a serious
element in life.

In the same way the spread of a political or
social movement was at least as rapid then as now,
and far more penetrating. The methods were,
of course, vastly different from the present ; but
the human material to be dealt with was far easier
to mould, and kept its shape much more readily
when moulded, than is the case now-a-days.
The appearance of a religious or political
teacher in a village or small town of the
Middle Ages was an event which keenly ex-
cited the interest of the inhabitants. It struck
across the path of their daily life, leaving
behind it a track hardly conceivable to-day.
For one of the salient symptoms of the change
which has taken place since that time is the
disappearance of local centres of activity, and
the transference of the intensity of life to a few
large towns. In the Middle Ages, every town,

SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS REVOLT. 89

small no less than large, was a more or less self-
sufficing organism, intellectually and industrially,
and was not essentially dependent on the out-
side world for its social sustenance. This was
especially the case in Central Europe, where
communication was jnuch more imperfect and
dangerous than in Italy, France, or England.
In a society without newspapers, without easy
communication with the rest of the world, when
the vast majority could neither read nor write,
when books were rare and costly, and accessible
only to the privileged few, a new idea bursting
upon one of these communities was eagerly
welcomed, discussed in the council chamber of
the town, in the hall of the castle, in the refec-
tory of the monastery, at the social board of
the burgess, in the workroom, and, did it but
touch his interests, in the hut of the pea-
sant. It was canvassed, too, at church festivals
(Kirchweihe), the only regular occasion on
which the inhabitants of various localities
came together. In theabsenceof all other
distraction, men thought it out in all the bear-
ings which their limited intellectual horizon
permitted. If calculated in any way to appeal
to them, it soon struck root, and became a

9o GERMAN SOCIETY.

part of their very nature, a matter for which,
if occasion were, they were prepared to sacri-
fice goods, liberty, and even life itself. In
the present day a new idea is comparatively
slow in taking root. Amid the myriad distrac-
tions of modern life, perpetually chasing one
another, there is no time for any one thought,
however wide-reaching in its bearings, to take
a firm hold. In order that it should do this in
the modern mind, it must be again and again
borne in upon this, not always too receptive
intellectual substance. People require to read
of it day after day in their newspapers, or to
hear it preached from countless platforms, be-
fore any serious effect is created. In the simple
life of former ages it was not so.

The mode of transmitting intelligence,
especially such as was connected with the
stirring up of political and religious move-
ments, was in those days of a nature of which
we have now little conception. The sort of
thing in vogue then may be compared to the
methods adopted in India to prepare the
mutiny of 1857, when the mysterious cake was
passed from village to village, signifying that the
moment had come for the outbreak. We have

1

SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS REVOLT. 91

already seen how Joss Fritz used the guild of
beggars as fetchers and carriers of news and as
auxiliaries in his organisation generally. The
fact is noteworthy, moreover, that his confi-
dence in them does not seem to have been
misplaced, for the collapse of the movement
cannot certainly be laid to their account. The
sense of esprit de corps and of that kind of
honour most intimately associated with it is,
it must also be remembered, infinitely keener
in ruder states of society than under a high
civilisation. The growth of civilisation, as
implying the disruption of the groups in which
the individual is merged under more primitive
conditions, and his isolation as an autonomous
unit having vague_and_very^ elastic^ moral duties
to his "country" or to the whole of mankind,
but none towards any definite and proximate
social whole, necessarily destroys that com-
munal spirit which prevails in the former case.
This is one of the striking truths which the
history of these peasant risings illustrates in
various ways and brings vividly home 19 us.

CHAPTER II.

THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT.

THE " great man " theory of history, formerly
everywhere prevalent, and even now common
among non-historical persons, has long regarded
the Reformation as the purely personal work
of the Augustine monk who was its central
figure. The fallacy of this conception is par-
ticularly striking in the case of the Reforma-
tion. Not only was it preceded by numerous
sporadic outbursts of religious revivalism which
sometimes took the shape of opposition to the
dominant form of Christianity, though it is
true they generally shaded off into mere move-
ments of independent Catholicism within the
Church ; but there were in addition at least
two distinct religious movements which led
up to it, while much which, under the re-
formers of the sixteenth century, appears as
a distinct and separate theology, is traceable
in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in the

mystical movement connected with the names

(92)

THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT. 93

of Meister Eckhart^nd Tauler. Meister Eck-
hart, whose free treatment of Christian doctrines,
in order to bring them into consonance with his
mystical theology, had drawn him into conflict
with the Papacy, undoubtedly influenced Luther
through his disciple, Tauler, and especially
through the book which proceeded from the
latter's school, the Deutsche Theologie. It is,
however, in the much more important move-
ment, which originated with Wyclif and ex-
tended to Central Europe through Huss, that
we must look for the more obvious influences
determining the course of religious development
in Germany.

The Wycliffite movement in England was
less a doctrinal heterodoxy than a revolt
against the Papacy and the priestly hierarchy.
\ Mere theoretical speculations were seldom in-
'terfered with, but anything which touched their
material interests at once aroused the vigilance
of the clergy. It is noticeable that the diffusion
of Lollardism, that is of the ideas of Wyclif, if
not the cause of, was at least followed by the
peasant rising under the leadership of John
Ball, a connection which is also visible in the
Tziska revolt following the Hussite movement.

94 GERMAN SOCIETY.

and the Peasants' War in Germany which came
on the heels of the Lutheran Reformation.
How much Huss was directly influenced by
the teachings of Wyclif is clear. The works of
the latter were widely circulated throughout
Europe ; for one of the advantages of the
custom of writing in Latin, which was universal
during the Middle Ages, was that books of an
important character were immediately current
amongst all scholars without having, as now, to
wait upon the caprice and ability of translators.
Huss read Wyclif 's works as the preparation
for his theological degree, and subsequently
made them his text-books when teaching at
the University of Prague. After his treacher-
ous execution at Constance, and the events
which followed thereupon in Bohemia, a num-
ber of Hussite fugitives settled in Southern
Germany, carrying with them the seeds of the
new doctrines. An anonymous contemporary
writer states that " to John Huss and his fol-
lowers are to be traced almost all those false
principles concerning the power of the spiritual
and temporal authorities and the possession of
earthly goods and rights which before in
Bohemia, and now with us, have called forth

THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT. 95

revolt and rebellion, plunder, arson, and murder,
and have shaken to its foundations the whole
commonwealth. The poison of these false
doctrines has been long flowing from Bohemia
into Germany, and will produce the same deso-
lating consequences wherever it spreads."

The condition of the Catholic Church, against
which the Reformation movement generally was
a. protest, needs here to be made clear to the
reader. The beginning of clerical disintegra-
tion is distinctly visible in the first half of the
fourteenth century. The interdicts, as an insti-
tution, had ceased to be respected, and the
priesthood itself began openly to sink itself in
debauchery and to play fast and loose with the
rites of the Church. Indulgences for a hundred
years were readily granted for a consideration.
The manufacture of relics became an organised
branch of industry ; and festivals of fools and
festivals of asses were invented by the jovial/ ?
priests themselves in travesty of sacred mysteries/?
as a welcome relaxation from the monotony of
prescribed ecclesiastical ceremony. Pilgrimages
increased in number and frequency ; new saints
were created by the dozen ; and the disbelief of
the clergy in the doctrines they professed was

96 GERMAN SOCIETY.

manifest even to the most illiterate, whilst con-
tempt for the ceremonies they practised was
openly displayed in the performance of their
clerical functions. An illustration of this is
the joke of the priests related by Luther, who
were wont during the celebration of the mass,
when the worshippers fondly imagined that the
sacred formula of transubstantiation was being
repeated, to replace the words Panis es et
carnem fiebis, " Bread thou art and flesh thou
shalt become," by Panis es et panem manebis,
" Bread thou art and bread thou shalt remain ".
The scandals as regards clerical manners,
growing, as they had been, for many genera-
tions, reached their climax in the early part of
the sixteenth century. It was a common thing
for priests to drive a roaring trade as money-
lenders, landlords of alehouses and gambling
dens, and, even in some cases, brothel-keepers.
Papal ukases had proved ineffective to stem the
current of clerical abuses. The regular clergy
evoked even more indignation than the secular.
"Stinking cowls" was a favourite epithet for the
monks. Begging, cheating, shameless ignorance,
drunkenness and debauchery, are alleged as being
their noted characteristics. One of the princes of

THE REFORM A TION MO VEMENT. g 7

the Empire addresses a prior of a convent
largely patronised by aristocratic ladies as
" Thou, our common brother-in-law!" In some
of the convents of Friesland, promiscuous in-
tercourse between the sexes was, it is said, quite
openly practised, the offspring being reared as
monks and nuns. The different orders competed
with each other for the fame and wealth to be
obtained out of the public credulity. A fraud
attempted by the Dominicans at Bern, in
1 506, with the concurrence of the heads of the
order throughout Germany, was one of the main
causes of that city adopting the Reformation.1

In addition to the increasing burdens of in-
vestitures, annates, and other Papal dues, the
brunt of which the German people had directly
or indirectly to bear, special offence was given
at the beginning of the sixteenth century by the
excessive exploitation of the practice of indul-
gences by Leo X. for the purpose of completing
the cathedral of St. Peter's at Rome. It was
this, coming on the top of the exactions already
rendered necessary by the increasing luxury and
debauchery of the Papal Court and those of the
other ecclesiastical dignitaries, that directly led

1 See Appendix B for this and an instance of a successful
imposture. 7

98 GERMAN SOCIETY.

to the dramatic incidents with which the
Lutheran Reformation opened.

The remarkable personality with which the
religious side of the Reformation is pre-emi-
nently associated was a child of his time, who
had passed through a variety of mental strug-
gles, and had already broken through the bonds
of the old ecclesiasticism before that turning
point in his career which is usually reckoned
the opening of the Reformation, to wit — the
nailing of the theses on to the door of the
Schloss-Kirche in Wittenberg on the 3ist of
October, 1517. Martin Luther, we must always
bear in mind, however, was no Protestant in the
English Puritan sense of the word. It was not
merely that he retained much of what would be
deemed by the old-fashioned English Protestant
" Romish error " in his doctrine, but his prac-
tical view of life showed a reaction from the
ascetic pretensions which he had seen bred
nothing but hypocrisy and the worst forms of
sensual excess. It is, indeed, doubtful if- the
man who sang the praises of "Wine, Women,
and Song " would have been deemed a fit re-
presentative in Parliament or elsewhere by the
British Nonconformist conscience of our day ;

THE REFORM A TION MO VEMENT. 99

or would be acceptable in any capacity to the
grocer-deacon of our provincial towns, who,
not content with being allowed to sand his
sugar and adulterate his tea unrebuked, would
socially ostracise every one whose conduct did
not square with his conventional shibboleths.
Martin Luther was a child of his time also as
a boon companion. The freedom of his living
in the years following his rupture with Rome
was the subject of severe animadversions on the
part of the noble, but in this respect narrow-
minded Thomas Mtinzer, who in his open letter
addressed to the " Soft-living flesh of Witten-
berg," scathingly denounces what he deems his
debauchery. It does not enter into our province
here to discuss at length the religious aspects of
the Reformation ; but it is interesting to note in
passing the more than modern liberality of
Luther's views with respect to the marriage
question and the celibacy of the clergy, con-
trasted with the strong mediaeval flavour of his
belief in witchcraft and sorcery. In his De
Captivitate Babylonica Ecclesice (1519) he ex-
presses the view that if, for any cause, husband
or wife are prevented from having sexual inter-
course they are justified, the woman equally

ioo GERMAN SOCIETY.

with the man, in seeking it elsewhere. He
was opposed to divorce, though he did not
forbid it, and recommended that a man should
rather have a plurality of wives than that he
should put away any of them. Luther held
strenuously the view that marriage was a purely
external contract for the purpose of sexual satis-
faction, and in no way entered into the spiritual
life of the man. On this ground he sees no
objection in the so-called mixed marriages,
which were, of course, frowned upon by the
Catholic Church. In his sermon on " Married
Life " he says : " Know therefore that marriage
is an outward thing, like any other worldly busi-
ness. Just as I may eat, drink, sleep, walk,
ride, buy, speak and bargain with a heathen, a
Jew, a Turk or a heretic ; so may I also be and
remain married to such an one, and I care not
one jot for the fool's laws which forbid it. ...
A heathen is just as much man or woman, well
and shapely made by God, as St. Peter, St.
Paul, or St. Lucia." Nor did he shrink from
applying his views to particular cases, as is
instanced by his correspondence with Philip
von Hesse, whose constitution appears to have
required more than one wife. He here lays

THE RE FORM A TION MO VEMENT. i o i

down explicitly the doctrine that polygamy and
concubinage are not forbidden to Christians,
though, in his advice to Philip, he adds the
caveat that he should keep the matter dark to
the end that offence might not be given ;
"for," says he, "it matters not, provided one's
conscience is right, what others say ". In
one of his sermons on the Pentateuch l we
find the words : " Ic is not forbidden that a
man have more than one wife. I would not
forbid it to-day, albeit I would not advise
it. ... Yet neither would I condemn it"
Other opinions on the nature of the sexual
relations were equally broad ; for in one of
his writings on monastic celibacy his words
plainly indicate his belief that chastity, no
more than other fleshly mortifications, was to
be considered a divine ordinance for all men
or women. In an address to the clergy he
says : "A woman not possessed of high and
rare grace can no more abstain from a man
than from eating, drinking, sleeping, or other
natural function. Likewise a man cannot ab-
stain from a woman. The reason is that it
is as deeply implanted in our nature to breed

1 Sdmmt. Werke, xxxiii., 322-324.

io2 GERMAN SOCIETY.

children as it is to eat and drink."1 The
worthy Janssen observes in a scandalised tone
that Luther, as regards certain matters relat-
ing to married life, " gave expression to prin-
ciples before unheard of in Christian Europe ; "
and the British Nonconformist of to-day, if he
reads these " immoral " opinions of the hero of
the Reformation, will be disposed to echo the
sentiments of the Ultramontane historian.

The relation of the Reformation to the
" New Learning " was in Germany not unlike
that which existed in the other northern
countries of Europe, and notably in England.
Whilst the hostility of the latter to the mediaeval
Church was very marked, and it was hence dis-
posed to regard the religious Reformation as an
ally, this had not proceeded very far before
the tendency of the Renaissance spirit was to
side with Catholicism against the new theology
and dogma, as merely destructive and hostile
to culture. The men of the Humanist move-
ment were for the most part Freethinkers, and
it was with them that freethought first appeared

1 Quoted in Janssen, Ein Zweiter Wort an nieine
Kritiker, 1883, p. 94.

- Geschichte des Deutschen Volkes, vol. ii., p. 115.

THE REFORM A TION MO VEMENT. 103

in modern Europe. They therefore had little
sympathy with the narrow bigotry of religious
reformers, and preferred to remain in touch
with the Church, whose then loose and toler-
ant Catholicism gave freer play to intellectual
speculations, provided they steered clear of
overt theological heterodoxy, than the newer
systems, which, taking theology au grand
s^rieux, tended to regard profane art and
learning as more or less superfluous, and
spent their whole time in theological wrangles.
Nevertheless, there were not wanting men
who, influenced at first by the revival of learn-
ing, ended by throwing themselves entirely
into the Reformation movement, though in
these cases they were usually actuated rather
by their hatred of the Catholic hierarchy than
by any positive religious sentiment.

Of such men Ulrich von Hutten, the descend-
ant of an ancient and influential knightly family,
was a note worthy example. After having already
acquired fame as the author of a series of skits
in the new Latin, and other works of classical
scholarship, being also well known as the ardent
supporter of Reuchlin in his dispute with the
Church, and as the friend and correspondent

1 04 GERMAN SO CIE T Y.

of the central Humanist figure of the time,
Erasmus, he watched with absorbing interest
the movement which Luther had inaugurated.
Six months after the nailing of the theses at
Wittenberg, he writes enthusiastically to a friend
respecting the growing ferment in ecclesiastical
matters, evidently regarding the new movement
as a Kilkenny-cat fight. " The leaders," he
says, " are bold and hot, full of courage and
zeal. Now they shout and cheer, now they
lament and bewail, as loud as they can. They
have lately set themselves to write ; the printers
are getting enough to do. Propositions, corol-
laries, conclusions, and articles are being sold.
For this alone I hope they will mutually destroy
each other." "A few days ago a monk was
telling me what was going on in Saxony, to
which I replied : ' Devour each other in order
that ye in turn may be devoured (sic] '. Pray
Heaven that our enemies may fight each other
to the bitter end, and by their obstinacy ex-
tinguish each other." From this it will be
seen that Hutten regarded the Reformation
in its earlier stages as merely a monkish
squabble, and failed to see the tremendous
upheaval of all the old landmarks of eccle-

THE REFORM A TION MO VEMENT. 1 05

siastical domination which was immanent in
it. So soon, however, as he perceived its
real significance, he threw himself wholly into
the movement. It must not be forgotten,
moreover, that, although Hutten's zeal for
Humanism made him welcome any attempt to
overthrow the power of the clergy and the
monks, he had also an eminently political
motive for his action in what was, in some
respects, the main object of his life, viz., to
rescue the " knighthood," or smaller nobility,/
from having their independence crushed out b)|
the growing powers of the princes of the Empire]
Probably more than one-third of the manors
were held by ecclesiastical dignitaries, so that
anything which threatened their possessions
and privileges seemed to strike a blow at the
very foundations of the imperial system. Hut-
ten hoped that the new doctrines would set the
princes by the ears all round ; and that then, by
allying themselves with the reforming party,
the knighthood might succeed in retaining the
privileges which still remained to them, but
were rapidly slipping awray, and might even
regain some of those which had been already
lost. It was not till later, however, that Hutten

io6 GERMAN SOCIETY.

saw matters in this light. He was at the time
the above letter was written in the service of
the Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz, the lead-
ing favourer of the new learning amongst the
prince-prelates, and it was mainly from the
Humanist standpoint that he regarded the be-
ginnings of the Reformation. After leaving the
service of the archbishop he struck up a personal
friendship with Luther, instigated thereto by his
political chief, Franz von Sickingen, the leader of
the knighthood, from whom he probably received
the first intimation of the importance of the new
movement to their common cause.

When, in 1520, the young Emperor, Charles
V., was crowned at Aachen, Luther's party, as
well as the knighthood, expected that consider-
able changes would result in a sense favourable
to their position from the presumed pliability of
the new head of the Empire. His youth, it was
supposed, would make him more sympathetic to
the newer spirit which was rapidly developing
itself; and it is true that about the time of his
election Charles had shown a transient favour
to the " recalcitrant monk ". It would appear,
however, that this was only for the purpose of
frightening the Pope into abandoning his de-

THE RE FORM A TION MO VEMENT. 107

clared intention of abolishing the Inquisition in
Spain, then regarded as one of the mainstays
of the royal power, and still more to exercise
pressure upon him, in order that he should
facilitate Charles's designs on the Milanese
territory. Once these objects were attained,
he was just as ready to oblige the Pope by
suppressing the new anti- Papal movement as
he might possibly otherwise have been to have
favoured it with a view to humbling the only
serious rival to his dominion in the Empire.

Immediately after his coronation, he proceeded
to Cologne and convoked by imperial edict a
Reichstag at Worms for the following 2/th of
January, 1521. The proceedings of this famous
Reichstag have been unfortunately so identi-
fied with the edict against Luther that the other
important matters which were there discussed
have almost fallen into oblivion. At least two
other questions were dealt with, however, which
are significant of the changes that were then
taking place. The first was the rehabilitation
and strengthening of the Imperial Governing
Council (Reuhs-Regiment\ whose functions
under Maximilian had been little more than
nominal. There was at first a feeling amongst

io8 GERMAN SOCIETY.

the States in favour of transferring all authority
to it, even during the residence of the Emperor
in the Empire ; and in the end, while having
granted to it complete power during his absence,
it practically retained very much of this power
when he was present. In constitution it was
very similar to the French " Parliaments," and
like them was principally composed of learned
jurists, four being elected by the Emperor and
the remainder by the estates. The character
and the great powers of this council, extending
even to ecclesiastical matters during the ensuing
years, undoubtedly did much to hasten on the
substitution of the civil law for the older
customary or common law, a matter which
we shall consider more in detail later on.
The financial condition of the Empire was
also considered ; and it here first became evi-
dent that the dislocation of economic conditions,
which had begun with the century, would render
an en^rmpusl^Jncreased taxajdoji_4iec£asaxy_ to
maintain the imperial authority, amounting to
five times as much as had previously been
required.

It was only after these secular affairs of the
Empire had been disposed of that the delibera-

THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT. 109

tions of the Reichstag on ecclesiastical matters
were opened by the indictment of Luther in
a long speech by Aleander, one of the papal
nuncios, in introducing the Pope's letter. In
spite of the efforts of his friends, Luther was
not permitted to be present at the beginning of
the proceedings ; but subsequently he was sent
for by the Emperor, in order that he might state
his case. His journey to Worms was one long
triumph, especially at Erfurt, where he was
received with enthusiasm by the Humanists as
the enemy of the Papacy. But his presence in
the Reichstag was unavailing, and the proceed-
ings resulted in his being placed under the ban of
the Empire. The safe-conduct of the Emperor
was, however, in his case respected ; and in spite
of the fears of his friends that a like fate might
befall him as had befallen Huss a£&*uhe Council
of Constance, he was allowed to depart unmo-
lested.

On his way to Wittenberg Luther was seized
by arrangement with his supporter, the Kur-
ftirst of Saxony, and conveyed in safety to the
Castle of Wartburg, in Thuringen, a report in
the meantime being industriously circulated by
certain of his adherents, with a view of arousing

GERMAN SOCIETY.

popular feeling, that he had been arrested by-
order of the Emperor and was being tortured.
In this way he was secured from all danger for
the time being, and it was during his subsequent
stay that he laid the foundations of the literary
language of Germany.

Says a contemporary writer,1 an eye-witness
of what went on at Worms during the sitting of
the Reichstag : " All is disorder and confusion.
Seldom a night doth pass but that three or
four persons be slain. The Emperor hath in-
stalled a provost, who hath drowned, hanged,
and murdered over a hundred men." He
proceeds : " Stabbing, whoring, flesh-eating (it
was in Lent) . . . altogether there is an orgie
worthy of the Venusberg". He further states
that many gentlemen and other visitors had
drunk themselves to death on the strong Rhenish
wine. Aleander was in danger of being mur-
dered by the Lutheran populace, instigated
thereto by Hutten's inflammatory letters from
the neighbouring Castle of Ebernburg, in
which Franz von Sickingen had given him a
refuge. The fiery Humanist wrote to Aleander
himself, saying that he would leave no stone
1 Quoted in Janssen, bk. ii., 162.

THE RE FORM A TION MO VEMENT. 1 1 1

unturned " till thou who earnest hither full of
wrath, madness, crime, and treachery shalt be
carried hence a lifeless corpse ". Aleander
naturally felt exceedingly uncomfortable, and
other supporters of the Papal party were not
less disturbed at the threats which seemed in a
fair way of being carried out. The Emperor
himself was without adequate means of with-
standing a popular revolt should it occur. He
had never been so low in cash or in men as at
that moment. On the other hand, Sickingen,
to whom he owed money, and who was the only
man who could have saved the situation under
the circumstances, had matters come to blows,
was almost overtly on the side of the Lutherans ;
while the whole body of the impoverished knight-
hood were only awaiting a favourable opportu-
nity to overthrow the power of the magnates,
secular and ecclesiastic, with Sickingen as a
leader. Such was the state of affairs at the
beginning of the year 1521.

The ban placed upon Luther by the Reich-
stag marks the date of the complete rupture be-
tween the Reforming party and the old Church.
Henceforward, many Humanist and Humanis-
tically-influenced persons who had supported

ii2 GERMAN SO CIE T Y.

him withdrew from the movement and swelled
the ranks of the Conservatives. Foremost
amongst these were Pirckheimer, the wealthy
merchant and scholar of Nurnberg, and many
others who dreaded lest the attack on ecclesias-
tical property and authority should, as indeed
was the case, issue in a general attack on all
property and authority. Thomas Murner, also,
who was the type of the " moderate " of the
situation, while professing to disapprove of the
abuses of the Church, declared that Luther's
manner of agitation could only lead to the de-
struction of all order, civil no less than eccle-
siastical. The two parties were now clearly
defined, and the points at issue were plainly
irreconcilable with one another or involved
irreconcilable details.

The printing press now for the first time
appeared as the vehicle for popular literature ;
the art of the bard gave place to the art of the
typographer, and the art of the preacher saWj
confronting it a formidable rival in that o
the pamphleteer. Similarly in the French
Revolution modern journalism, till then un-
important and sporadic, received its first great
development, and began seriously to displace

THE REPORMA TION MO VEMENT. 1 1 3

. alike the preacher, the pamphlet, and the
broadside. The flood of theological disquisi-
tions, satires, dialogues, sermons, which now
poured from every press in Germany, over-
flowed into all classes of society. These
writings are so characteristic of the time that
it is worth while devoting a few pages to their
consideration, the more especially because it
will afford us the opportunity for considering
other changes in that spirit of the age, partly
diseased growths of decaying medisevalism, and
partly the beginnings of the modern critical
spirit, which also find expression in the litera-
ture of the Reformation period.

CHAPTER III.

POPULAR LITERATURE OF THE REFORMATION.

IN accordance with the conventional view we
have assumed in the preceding chapter that the
Reichstag at Worms was a landmark in the
history of the Reformation. This is, however,
only true as regards the political side of the
movement. The popular feeling was really quite
continuous, at least from 1 5 1 7 to 1525. With the
latter year and the collapse of the peasant
revolt a change is noticeable. In 1525, the
Reformation as a great upstirring of the popular
mind of Central Europe, in contradistinction to
its character as an academic and purely political
movement, reached high-water mark, and may
almost be said to have exhausted itself. Until the
latter year it was purely a revolutionary move-
ment, attracting to itself all the disruptive
elements of its time. Later, the reactionary
possibilities within it declared themselves. The
emancipation from the thraldom of the Catholic

LITERATURE OF REFORMATION PERIOD. 115

hierarchy and its Papal head, it was soon found,
meant not emancipation from the arbitrary
tyranny of the new political and centralising
authorities then springing up, but, on the con-
trary, rather their consecration. The ultimate
outcome, in fact, of the whole business was, as
we shall see later on, the inculcation of the non-
resistance theory as regards the civil power,
and the clearing of the way for its extremest
expression in the doctrine of the Divine Right
of Kings, a theory utterly alien to the belief and
practice of the Mediaeval Church.

The Reichstag of Worms, by cutting off
all possibility of reconciliation, rather gave
further edge to the popular revolutionary side
of the movement than otherwise. The whole
progress of the change in public feeling is
plainly traceable in the mass of ephemeral
literature that has come down to us from this
period, broadsides, pamphlets, satires, folk-
songs, and the rest. The anonymous literature
to which we more especially refer is distin-
guished by its coarse brutality and humour,
€ven in the writings of the Reformers, which
were themselves in no case remarkable for the
suavity of their polemic.

1 1 6 GERMAN SOCIETY.

Hutten, in some of his later vernacular poems,
approaches the character of the less cultured
broadside literature. To the critical mind it
is somewhat amusing to note the enthusiasm
with which the modern Dissenting and Puritan
class contemplates the period of which we are
writing, — an enthusiasm that would probably
be effectively damped if the laudators of the
Reformation knew the real character of the
movement and of its principal actors.

The first attacks made by the broadside
literature were naturally directed against the
simony and benefice-grabbing of the clergy, a
characteristic of the priestly office that has
always powerfully appealed to the popular
mind. Thus the " Courtisan and Benefice-
eater " attacks the parasite of the Roman Court,
who absorbs ecclesiastical revenues wholesale,
putting in perfunctory locum tenens on the
cheap, and begins :—

I'm fairly called a Simonist and eke a Courtisan,

And here to every peasant and every common man

My knavery will very well appear.

I called and cried to all who'd give me ear,

To nobleman and knight and all above me :

" Behold me ! And ye'll find I'll truly love ye."

In another we read : —

LITERATURE OF REFORMATION PERIOD. 117

The Paternoster teaches well

How one for another his prayers should tell,

Thro' brotherly love and not for gold,

And good those same prayers God doth hold.

So too saith Holy Paul right clearly,

Each shall his brother's load bear dearly.

But now, it declares, all that is changed. Now
we are being taught just the opposite of God's
teachings :—

Such doctrine hath the priests increased,
Whom men as masters now must feast,
'Fore all the crowd of Simonists,
Whose waxing number no man wists,
The towns and thorps seem full of them,
And in all lands they're seen with shame.
Their violence and knavery
Leave not a church or living free.

A prose pamphlet, apparently published about
the summer of 1520, shortly after Luther's ex-
communication, was the so-called " Wolf Song"
(Wolf-gesang), which paints the enemies of
Luther as wolves. It begins with a screed
on the creation and fall of Adam, and a disserta-
tion on the dogma of the Redemption ; and then
proceeds : " As one might say, dear brother,
instruct me, for there is now in our times so great
commotion in faith come upon us. There is one
in Saxony who is called Luther, of whom many

1 1 8 GERMAN SOCIETY.

pious and honest folk tell how that he doth write
so consolingly the good evangelical (evangeli$cke\
truth. But again I hear that the Pope and the
cardinals at Rome have put him under the ban
as a heretic ; and certain of our own preachers,
too, scold him from their pulpits as a knave, a
misleader, and a heretic. I am utterly con-
founded, and know not where to turn ; albeit my
reason and heart do speak to me even as Luther
writeth. But yet again it bethinks me that
when the Pope, the cardinal, the bishop, the
doctor, the monk and the priest, for the greater
part are against him, and so that all save the
common men and a few gentlemen, doctors,
councillors and knights, are his adversaries, what
shall I do ? " " For answer, dear friend, get
thee back and search the Scriptures, and thou
shalt find that so it hath gone with all the holy
prophets even as it now fareth with Doctor
Martin Luther, who is in truth a godly Christian
and manly heart and only true Pope and Apostle,
when he the true office of the Apostles publicly
fulfilleth. ... If the godly man Luther were
pleasing to the world, that were indeed a true
sign that his doctrine were not from God ; for
the word of God is a fiery sword, a hammer

LITER A TURE OF RE FORM A TION PERIOD. 1 1 9

that breaketh in pieces the rocks, and not a
fox's tail or a reed that may be bent according
to our pleasure." Seventeen noxious qualities
of the wolf are adduced, his ravenousness, his
cunning, his falseness, his cowardice, his thirst
for robbery, amongst others. The Popes, the
cardinals and the bishops are compared to the
wolves in all their attributes : " The greater his
pomp and splendour, the more shouldst thou
beware of such an one ; for he is a wolf that
cometh in the shape of a good shepherd's dog.
Beware ! it is against the custom of Christ and
His Apostles." It is again but the song of the
wolves when they claim to mix themselves with
worldly affairs and maintain the temporal sup-
remacy. The greediness of the wolf is discern-
ible in the means adopted to get money for the
building of St. Peter's. The interlocutor is
warned against giving to mendicant priests and
monks. In this strain is the pamphlet con-
tinued, reference being made to Luther's dis-
pute with Eck, who is sometimes called Dr.
Geek, that is, Dr. Fop.

We have given this as a specimen of the
almost purely theological pamphlet ; although,
as will have been evident, even this is directly

120 GERMAN SOCIETY.

connected with the material abuses from which
the people were suffering. Another pamphlet of
about the same date deals with usury, the burden
of which had been greatly increased by the growth
of the new commercial combinations already re-
ferred to in the Introduction, which combina-
tions Dr. Eck had been defending at Bologna
on theological grounds, in order to curry favour
with the Augsburg merchant-prince, Fugger-
schwatz.1 It is called "Concerning Dues. Hither
comes a poor peasant to a rich citizen. A priest
comes also thereby, and then a monk. Full
pleasant to read." A peasant visits a burgher
when he is counting money, and asks him where
he gets it all from. "My dear peasant," says
the townsman, " thou askest me who gave me
this money. I will tell thee. There cometh
hither a peasant, and beggeth me to lend him
ten or twenty gulden. Thereupon I ask him
an he possesseth not a goodly meadow or corn-
field. ' Yea ! good sir ! ' saith he, ' I have in-
deed a good meadow and a good corn-field. The
twain are worth a hundred gulden.' Then say I
to him : ' Good, my friend, wilt thou pledge me
thy holding ? and an thou givest me one gulden
1 See Appendix C.

LITERATURE OF REFORMATION PERIOD. 121

of thy money every year I will lend thee twenty
gulden now '. Then is the peasant right glad,
and saith he : ' Willingly will I pledge it thee'. ' I
will warn thee,' say I, 'that an thou furnishest
not the one gulden of money each year, I will
take thy holding for my own having.' There-
with is the peasant well content, and writeth him
down accordingly. I lend him the money ; he
payeth me one year, or may be twain, the due ;
thereafter can he no longer furnish it, and there-
upon I take the holding, and drive away the
peasant therefrom. Thus I get the holding and
the money. The same things do I with handi-
craftsmen. Hath he a good house? Hepledgeth
that house until I bring it behind me. There-
with gain I much in goods and money, and thus
do I pass my days." '' I thought," rejoined the
peasant, li that 'twere only the Jew who did
usury, but I hear that ye also ply that trade."
The burgher answers that interest is not
usury, to which the peasant replies that in-
terest (Gulf] is only a " subtle name ". The
burgher then quotes Scripture, as commanding
men to help one another. The peasant readily
answers that in doing this they have no right to
get advantage from the assistance they proffer.

1 2 2 GERMAN SOCIETY.

" Thou art a good fellow ! " says the townsman.
" If I take no money for the money that I lend,
how shall I then increase my hoard ? " The
peasant then reproaches him that he sees well
that his object in life is to wax fat on the sub-
stance of others ; " But I tell thee, indeed," he
says, " that it is a great and heavy sin ". Where-
upon his opponent waxes wroth, and will have
nothing more to do with him, threatening to kick
him out in the name of a thousand devils ; but
the peasant returns to the charge, and expresses
his opinion that rich men do not willingly hear
the truth. A priest now enters, and to him
the townsman explains the dispute. " Dear
peasant," says the priest, "wherefore earnest
thou hither, that thou shouldst make of a due l
usury ? May not a man buy with his money
what he will ? " But the peasant stands by his
previous assertion, demanding how anything
can be considered as bought which is only a
pledge. "We priests," replies the ecclesiastic,
"must perforce lend money for dues, since

1 We use the word "due" here for the German word
Gulf. The corresponding English of the time does not
make any distinction between Giilt or interest, and Wucher
or usury.

LITERATURE OF REFORMATION PERIOD. 123

thereby we get our living ; " to which, after
sundry ejaculations of surprise, the peasant re-
torts : "Who gave to you the power? I well
hear ye have another God than we poor people.
We have our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath for-
bidden such money-lending for gain." Hence
it comes, he goes on, that land is no longer
free ; to attempt to whitewash usury under the
name of due or interest, he says, is just the
same as if one were to call a child christened
Friedrich or Hansel, Fritz or Hans, and then
maintain it was no longer the same child.
They require no more Jews, he says, since
the Christians have taken their business in
hand. The townsman is once more about
to turn the peasant out of his house, when
a monk enters. He then lays the matter
before the new-comer, who promises to talk
the peasant over with soft words ; for. says
he, there is nothing accomplished with vain-
glory. He thereupon takes him aside and ex-
plains it to him by the illustration of a merchant
whose gain on the wares he sells is not called
usury, and argues that therefore other forms of
gain in business should not be described by this
odious name. But the peasant will have none

i24 GERMAN SOCIETY.

of this comparison ; for the merchant, he says,
needs to incur much risk in order to gain and
traffic with his wares ; while money-lending on
security is, on the other hand, without risk or
labour, and is a treacherous mode of cheating.
Finding that they can make nothing of the
obstinate countryman, the others leave him ;
but he, as a parting shot, exclaims : " Ah,
well-a-day ! I would to have talked with thee
at first, but it is now ended. Farewell, gracious
sir, and my other kind sirs. I, poor little peasant,
I go my way. Farewell, farewell, due remains
usury for evermore. Yea, yea ! due, indeed ! "
One more example will suffice to give the
reader an idea of the character of these first
specimens of pamphlet literature ; and this time
it shall be taken from the widely-read anony-
mous tract entitled " Der Karsthans ". [The
Man who wields the Hoe, that is, the Peasant.]
This production is specially directed against the
monk, Murner, who had at first, as already stated,
endeavoured to sit on the fence, admitting certain
abuses in the Church, but who before long took
sides against Luther and the Reformation, be-
coming, in fact, after the disputation with Eck, the
author of a series of polemical writings against

LITER A TURE OF RE FORM A TION PERIOD. 1 2 5

the hero of the Reformation. The most im-
portant of these appeared in the autumn of 1520;
and the " Karsthans " is the answer to them
from the popular side of the movement. On the
title-page Murner is depicted as a monk with
a cat's head ; and in the dialogue there are five
dramatis persona, Karsthans, Murner, Luther,
a Student, and Mercury, the latter interjecting
sarcastic remarks in Latin. Murner begins by
mewing like a cat. Karsthans, the peasant, and
his son, the student, listen, and describe to each
other the manners and characters of cats, especi-
ally their slyness and cunning. The son at the
bidding of his father is about to pelt the cat with
stones, but comes back, saying: "Oh, father!
what a loathsome beast ! It is no true cat, though
it looketh to be one. It waxeth even greater and
greater. Its hue is grey, and it hath a wondrous
head." As the father, Karsthans, is seeking
his flail that he may annihilate the beast, his
son discovers that it is human, at which the
father exclaims: "It is a devil!" They ad-
vance towards it, and discover it to be a church-
man. " I am a clerk and more than a clerk,"
cries Murner in anger. " I am eke a man and a
monk." Karsthans asks pardon ; but Murner

i26 GERMAN SOCIETY.

threatens him, and, as the monk grows more
exasperated, the son exhorts the father to
modesty in the presence of so exalted a
spiritual personage. "Oh, father!" cries the
son, "it is indeed a great man. I have read
his title. He is a poet, who hath been crowned
with the laurel wreath, and is a doctor in both
disciplines, and also in the Holy Scriptures.
Moreover, he is one of the free regular clergy,
and is called Thomas Murner of Strassburg."
Some chaff follows between the father and son
as to all the monk's spirituality residing in his
garb. This gives rise to a quarrel between
Karsthans and Murner, in which the student
again exhorts his father to moderation in his
language, on the ground that Murner is a good
jurist. Karsthans demands how it is compatible
to be spiritual in the cloister and cunning in the ,
world, to which Murner replies : Incompatibilia
auctoritate Papa unici possunt. (" Incompati-
bles can be made to agree by the authority of
the Pope.") Karsthans, who calls this a lie, is
roundly abused by Murner : " Thou boorish
clown, injustum est ut monachis operandibus
servi eorum otio torpeunt". ("It is unjust that
while monks are working, their servants should

LITERATURE OF REFORMATION PERIOD, 127

slumber in idleness.") " Yea, truly ! " answers
Karsthans, " ye stink of secrets." During
the dispute Luther enters. " Ah ! " exclaims
Murner, "doth that fellow come? There are
too many people here. Let me go out by
the back." Karsthans wonders at Murner's
attitude, as in a general way the Churches
were glad to meet each other, and as Luther
was everywhere recognised as a good man
and a pious Christian. Murner begs Karst-
hans not to reveal him, as he is pledged to
regard Luther as a heretic, and he is deter-
mined to prove him one. Karsthans wants to
know why he does not dispute personally with
Luther like " Dr. Genzkuss," meaning Eck, in
Leipzig. " But, father," interposes the son,
" Dr. Eck, as some say, hath not won for
himself much honour or victory over Luther."
Karsthans is amazed, and replies : " But yet he
hath so cried out and fought that scarce an one
might speak before him ". " He hath also," the
student observes, " received 500 ducats from
the Pope for his works ; and," he adds, " if Dr.
Eckius had overcome Luther, as he hath been
•overcome by him, he (that is, the Pope) would
have made of him a camel with broad hoofs,"

i28 GERMAN SOCIETY.

the latter being a current phrase to indicate a
cardinal; "and Murner also hopes to pluck
some feathers out of the crow, like Eck/J
Luther knocks again, and Murner tries to get
away, but Karsthans holds him back. After
sundry pleasantries between Karsthans and
Murner, in the course of which the monk
advises the peasant to go to the bookseller,
Griininger, in Strassburg, and buy his two
books, the one on " Baptism," and the other
entitled " A Christian and Brotherly Warning,"
Murner takes his leave, and Luther enters. On
Karsthans wanting to know what brings him
to Germany, he replies : " The simplicity of the
German people — to wit, that they are of so small
an understanding. What any man feigns and
lies to them, that they at once believe, and think
no further of the matter. Therefore are they
so much deceived, and a laughing stock for
other peoples." The student reminds his father
that Murner had declared Luther to be a
heretic. Karsthans thereupon again seeks his
flail ; but Luther demands impartiality. Since
he had heard Murner he should hear him also.
Karsthans agrees ; but the son objects, as the
Dominicans and doctors in Cologne, especially

LITERATURE OF REFORMATION PERIOD. 129

Hochstraten,1 had said that it was dangerous to
dispute with or give ear to such people, since
even the Ketzermeister (refuters of heretics)
often came off second best in the contest ; as in
the case of Dr. Reuchlin, who in spite of their
condemnation had been exonerated by Rome,
and the Papal sentence against him revoked.
" And again what a miracle happened in the
2oth year at Mainz ! There came a legate from
Rome, who was to see that Luther's books
were thoroughly burnt ; and while all were
awaiting the issue at the appointed place, the
hangman asked whether judgment had been
given that the books should be burnt ; and
since no one could tell him the truth, the care-
less fellow would not execute the sentence, and
went his way. Oh ! what great shame and
ignominy was shown to the legate ! And since
he was not willing to bear the shame, he must
persuade the hangman with cunning and pre-
sents that he should the next day burn two or
four little books. I had thought," concluded
the student, " that he had not need to have
asked further in the face of the Pope's legate
and strict command, and of the heretic-con-

1 Hochstraten was one of the great adversaries of Reuchlin.

9

130 GERMAN SOCIETY.

futer's office." Karsthans is indignant, and
threatens every " rascal from Rome " with his
flail; to which the student rejoins : " Oh, father!
thou thinkest it is with the Pope's power as
with thy headship in the village which thou
hast, where thou canst not of thy will act a
straw's breadth except with the knowledge and
consent of thy neighbours, who are all vile
peasants, and who think there will be sore
trouble if they judge other than as witness-
bearing dictateth. But it is not so with the Pope ;
ofttimes it is : Sic volumus, sic jubemus, oportet ;
sufficit, vicisse. (" As we will, as we command, so
let it be; it sufficeth to have prevailed.") Karst-
hans requires that if the Pope has divine
power, he should also do divine works ; whereas
the student defends the absolute power of the
Pope and the bishops. He complains that his
father is an enemy of the priests, like all the
rest of the peasants. Karsthans rejoins that
there are four propositions on which the whole
controversy turns : " Thou art Peter ; on St.
Peter I will build my Church. Feed my sheep.
What I bid you, that do ye. He who despiseth
you, despiseth me also." He then demands of
Luther that he should write in the German

LITERATURE OF REFORMATION PERIOD. 131

tongue, and let them see whether they could
not save him from the power of the Pope and
from the wearers of broad-brimmed hats. But
Luther declines such help, and thereupon de-
parts. Karsthans is offended that the Pope is
called by his son, the student, the highest
authority of the Christian faith. u For," says
he, " Christ alone is this authority. He is the
only bridegroom, and the bride can know no
other. Else were she impure and wrinkled,
and not a pure bride. Moreover, the bride is
not at variance with her bridegroom, but with the
Pope she is well-nigh always at variance. That
which one will, the other will not. Further-
more, the bride is spiritual, but this Roman is
bodily and worldly." The student answers : " The
bridegroom hath given the bride a bodily head,"
a point which the peasant disputes, while admit-
ting it may be good to have spiritual and carnal
authority; "but," says he, "Christ has called to
this office not only one but all the Apostles,"
and he enlarges on the difference between
this and the scramble for office then apparent
in the State. The student again remonstrates
with his peasant father for his unceremonious
treatment of the learned man ; and, at the same

1 32 GERMAN SOCIETY.

time, he blames Luther for attacking certain
articles of the Christian faith, which all men
ought to hold sacred. Karsthans wants to know
if he refers to the dogma of the Trinity. This
the student denies, saying that it is no such
thing as that, or any other question which the
theologians seek to prick with the point of a
needle. He finally admits that he is referring
to the question of the supremacy of the Pope,
affirming that it " were a deadly sin to believe
that the Pope had stood one quarter of an hour
in deadly sin. Item, that the Pope alone
shall interpret the right sense and meaning of
the Scriptures, and shall alone have full power,
not only on earth, but also in Purgatory." The
student then proceeds to quote the various
Credos, the Athanasian, the Nicene, and so
forth ; till at last Karsthans bursts out : " Look
you now ! if you make it so, the articles of
faith will at last be a great bookful. . . .
The pious doctor, Martin Luther, doth teach
aright : ' Rest thy faith on Christ alone, and
therewith hath the matter an end'." Karst-
hans, in addition, proceeds to uphold the right
of the common man to his own interpretation
of the articles of faith, maintaining the appeal

LITER A TURE OF RE FORM A TION PERIOD. 1 3 3

to Holy Writ against all ecclesiastical authority;
" for by the Scripture one knoweth unfail-
ingly at all time whether such authority do
rule righteously or not, since the Scripture is
the true article of covenant which Christ hath
left us ". The dispute continues, with occa-
sional interjections in Latin by Mercury, in his
capacity as cynical chorus, till Karsthans gets
very rude indeed, accuses the absent Murner of
having lice in his cowl, calls him an evil cat that
licks before and scratches behind, and demands
why he dare not go to Wittenberg to dispute
with Dr. Martin Luther, as Eck had just done.
Then with an Aldi, ich far dahin, equivalent to
the modern English, " Well, I'm off," from the
peasant, a Dii secundent from Mercury, and an
Uterque valeat from the student, the party sepa-
rates, and the dialogue comes to an end.

We have given a somewhat lengthy account
of this dialogue, on account of its importance,
even at the risk of wearying the reader. Its
drastic assertion of the right of the common
man to independence of his superiors in
spiritual matters, with its side hints and sug-
gestions justifying resistance to all authority
that had become oppressive, was not without

134 GERMAN SOCIETY.

its effects on the social movements of the fol-
lowing years. For the reader who wishes to
further study this literature we give the titles,
which sufficiently indicate their contents, of a
selection of other similar pamphlets and broad-
sheets : "A New Epistle from the Evil Clergy
sent to their righteous Lord, with an answer
from their Lord. Most merry to read" (1521).
" A Great Prize which the Prince of Hell, hight
Lucifer, now offereth to the Clergy, to the Pope,
Bishops, Cardinals, and their like " (1521). "A
Written Call, made by the Prince of Hell to his
dear devoted, of all and every condition in his
kingdom" (1521). "Dialogue or Converse of
the Apostolicum, Angelica, and other spices of
the Druggist, anent Dr. Martin Luther and his
disciples " (1521). "A Very Pleasant Dialogue
and Remonstrance from the Sheriff of Gaissdorf
and his pupil against the pastor of the same
and his assistant" (1521). The popularity of
" Karsthans " amongst the people is illustrated
by the publication and wide distribution of a new
" Karsthans " a few months later, in which it
is sought to show that the knighthood should
make common cause with the peasants, the
dramatis persona being Karsthans and Franz

LITER A TURE OF REFORM A TION PERIOD. 1 35

von Sickingen. Referring to the same subject
we find a " Dialogue which Franciscus von
Sickingen held fore heaven's gate with St.
Peter and the Knights of St. George before he
was let in ". This was published in 1523,
almost immediately after the death of Sick-
ingen. "A Talk between a Nobleman, a Monk,
and a Courtier" (1523). " A Talk between a
Fox and a Wolf" (1523). "A Pleasant Dia-
logue between Dr. Martin Luther and the cun-
ning Messenger from Hell " (1523). "A Con-
versation of the Pope with his Cardinals of how
it goeth with him, and how he may destroy the
Word of God. Let every man very well note "
(1523). " A Christian and Merry Talk, that it
is more pleasing to God and more wholesome
for men to come out of the monasteries and to
marry, than to tarry therein and to burn ;
which talk is not with human folly and the
false teachings thereof, but is founded alone
in the holy, divine, biblical and evangelical
Scripture" (1524). "A Pleasant Dialogue of
a Peasant with a Monk that he should cast his
Cowl from him. Merry and fair to read " (1525).
The above is only a selection of specimens
taken hap-hazard from the mass of fugitive

136 GERMAN SOCIETY.

literature which the early years of the Refor-
mation brought forth. In spite of a certain
rough but not unattractive directness of diction,
a prolonged reading of them is very tedious,
as will have been sufficiently seen from the
extracts we have given. Their humour is of
a particularly juvenile and obvious character,
and consists almost entirely in the childish de-
vice of clothing the personages with ridiculous
but non-essential attributes, or in placing them
in grotesque but pointless situations. Of the
more subtle humour, which consists in the dis-
covery of real but hidden incongruities, and
the perception of what is innately absurd, there
is no trace. The obvious abuses of the time
are satirised in this way ad nauseam. The
rapacity of the clergy in general, the idleness
and lasciviousness of the monks, the pomp and
luxury of the prince-prelates, the inconsisten-
cies of Church traditions and practices with
Scripture, with which they could now be com-
pared, since it was everywhere circulated in the
vulgar tongue, form their never-ending theme.
They reveal to the reader a state of things that
strikes one none the less in English literature
of the period, — the intense interest of all classes

LITER A TURE OF RE FORM A TION PERIOD. 1 3 7

in theological matters. It shows us how they
looked at all things through a theological lens.
Although we have left this phase of popular
thought so recently behind us, we can even now
scarcely imagine ourselves back into it. The
idea of ordinary men, or of the vast majority,
holding their religion as anything else than
a very pious opinion absolutely unconnected
with their daily life, public or private, has
already become almost inconceivable to us.
In all the writings of the time, the theological
interest is in the forefront. The economic
and social ground-work only casually reveals
itself. This it is that makes the reading of the
sixteenth century polemics so insufferably jejune
and dreary. They bring before us the ghosts
of controversies in which most men have ceased to
take any part, albeit they have not been dead and
forgotten long enough to have acquired a revived
antiquarian interest. It reminds one of the faint
echoes of the doctrinal disputes of a generation
ago, which, already dying on the Continent of
Europe, still continued to agitate the English
middle classes of all ranks, and are remembered
now with but a smile at their immense puerility.
The great bomb-shell which Luther cast

138 GERMAN SOCIETY.

forth on the 24th of June, 1520, in his address
to the German nobility,1 indeed contains strong
appeals to the economical and political neces-
sities of Germany, and therein we see the veil
torn from the half-unconscious motives that lay
behind the theological mask ; but, as already said,
in the popular literature, with a few exceptions,
the theological controversy rules undisputed.

The noticeable feature of all this irruption of
the cacoethes scribendi was the direct appeal to
the Bible for the settlement not only of strictly
theological controversies but of points of social
and political ethics also. This practice, which
even to the modern Protestant seems insipid
and played out after three centuries and a half
of wear, had at that time the to us inconceivable
charm of novelty ; and the perusal of the litera-
ture and controversies of the time shows that
men used it with all the delight of a child with
a new toy, and seemed never tired of the game of
searching out texts to justify their position. The
diffusion of the whole Bible in the vernacular,
itself a consequence of the rebellion against
priestly tradition and the authority of the
Fathers, intensified the revolt by making the
pastime possible to all ranks of society.
1 " An der Christlichen Adel deutscher Nation."

CHAPTER IV.

THE FOLKLORE OF THE REFORMATION.

Now in the hands of all men, the Bible
was not made the basis of doctrinal opinions
alone. It lent its support to many of the
popular superstitions of the time, and in ad-
dition it served as the starting point for new
superstitions and for new developments of the
older ones. The Pan-daemonism of the New
Testament, with its wonder - workings by
devilish agencies, its exorcisms of evil spirits
and the like, could not fail to have a deep effect
on the popular mind. The authority that the
book believed to be divinely inspired necessarily
lent to such beliefs gave a vividness to the
popular conception of the devil and his angels,
which is apparent throughout the whole move-
ment of the Reformation, and not least in the
utterances of the great Luther himself. Indeed,
with the Reformation there comes a complete
change over the popular conception of the devil
and diabolical influences.

It is true that the judicial pursuit of witches
(^39)

140 GERMAN SOCIETY.

and witchcraft, in the earlier Middle Ages only
a sporadic incident, received a great impulse
from the Bull of Pope Innocent VIII. (1484), to
which has been given the title of "Malleus Male-
ficorum," or " The Hammer of Witchcraft,"
directed against the practice of sorcery ; but it
was especially amongst the men of the New
Spirit that the belief in the prevalence of
compacts with the devil, and the necessity for
suppressing them, took root, and led to the
horrible persecutions that distinguished the
"Reformed" Churches on the whole even more
than the Catholic.

Luther himself had a vivid belief, tinging all
his views and actions, in the ubiquity of the
devil and his myrmidons. " The devils," says
he, "are near us, and do cunningly contrive
every moment without ceasing against our life,
our salvation, and our blessedness. ... In
woods, waters, and wastes, and in damp,
marshy places, there are many devils that
seek to harm men. In the black and thick
clouds, too, there are some that make storms,
hail, lightning, and thunder, that poison the air
and the pastures. When such things happen,
the philosophers and the physicians ascribe

FOLKLORE OF THE REFORMATION. 141

them to the stars, and show I know not what
causes for such misfortunes and plagues."
Luther relates numerous instances of personal
encounters that he himself had had with the
devil. A nobleman invited him, with other
learned men from the University of Witten-
berg, to take part in a hare hunt. A large,
fine hare and a fox crossed the path. The
nobleman, mounted on a strong, healthy steed,
dashed after them, when, suddenly, his horse
fell dead beneath him, and the fox and the hare
flew up in the air and vanished. " For," says
Luther, " they were devilish spectres."

Again, on another occasion, he was at E isle-
ben on the occasion of another hare-hunt, when
the nobleman succeeded in killing eight hares,
which were, on their return home, duly hung-
up for the next day's meal. On the following
morning, horses' heads were found in their
place. "In mines," says Luther, "the devil
oftentimes deceives men with a false appear-
ance of gold.'' All disease and all misfortune
were the direct work of the devil ; God, who
was all good, could not produce either. Luther
gives a long history of how he was called to a
parish priest, who complained of the devil's

142 GERMAN SOCIETY.

having created a disturbance in his house by
throwing the pots and pans about, and so forth,
and of how he advised the priest to exorcise
the fiend by invoking his own authority as a
pastor of the Church.

At the Wartburg, Luther complained of
having been very much troubled by the Satanic
arts. When he was at work upon his trans-
lation of the Bible, or upon his sermons, or
engaged in his devotions, the devil was always
making disturbances on the stairs or in the
room. One day, after a hard spell of study, he
lay down to sleep in his bed, when the devil
began pelting him with hazel nuts, a sack of
which had been brought to him a few hours
before by an attendant. He invoked, however,
the name of Christ, and lay down again in bed.
There were other more curious and more
doubtful recipes for driving away Satan and his
emissaries. Luther is never tired of urging
that contemptuous treatment and rude chaff are
among the most efficacious methods.

There was, he relates, a poor soothsayer, to
whom the devil came in visible form, and
offered great wealth provided that he would
deny Christ and never more do penance. The

FOLKLORE OF THE REFORMATION. 143

devil provided him with a crystal, by which he
could foretell events, and thus become rich.
This he did ; but Nemesis awaited him, for the
devil deceived him one day, and caused him to
denounce certain innocent persons as thieves.
In consequence, he was thrown into prison,
where he revealed the compact that he had
made, and called for a confessor. The two chief
forms in which the devil appeared were, accord-
ing to Luther, those of a snake and a sheep.
He further goes into the question of the popu-
lation of devils in different countries. On the
top of the Pilatus at Luzern is a black pond,
which is one of the devil's favourite abodes.
In Luther's own country there is also a high
mountain, the Poltersberg, with a similar pond.
When a stone is thrown into this pond, a great
tempest arises, which often devastates the whole
neighbourhood. He also alleges Prussia to be
full of evil spirits.

Devilish changelings, Luther said, were often
placed by Satan in the cradles of human children.
" Some maids he often plunges into the water,
and keeps them with him until they have borne
a child." These children are placed in the beds of
mortals, and the true children are taken out and

1 44 GERMAN SOCIE TY.

hurried away. "But," he adds, "such changelings
are said not to live more than to the eighteenth
or nineteenth year." As a practical application
of this, it may be mentioned that Luther advised
the drowning of a certain child of twelve years
old, on the ground of its being a devil's change-
ling. Somnambulism is, with Luther, the result
of diabolical agency. " Formerly," says he,
" the Papists, being superstitious people, alleged
that persons thus afflicted had not been pro-
perly baptised, or had been baptised by a
drunken priest." The irony of the reference to
superstition, considering the "great reformer's"
own position, will not be lost upon the reader.

Thus, not only is the devil the cause of pesti-
lence, but he is also the immediate agent of
nightmare and of nightsweats. At Mtflburg
in Thiiringen, near Erfurt, a piper, who was
accustomed to pipe at weddings, complained to
his priest that the devil had threatened to carry
him away and destroy him, on the ground of a
practical joke played upon some companions, to
wit, for having mixed horse-dung with their
wine at a drinking bout. The priest consoled
him with many passages of Scripture anent the
devil and his ways, with the result that the piper

FOLKLORE OF THE REFORMATION. 145

expressed himself satisfied as regarded the wel-
fare of his soul, but apprehensive as regarded
that of his body, which was, he asserted, hope-
lessly the prey of the devil. In consequence of
this, he insisted on partaking of the Sacrament.
The devil had indicated to him when he was
going to be fetched, and watchers were accord-
ingly placed in his room, who sat in their
armour and with their weapons, and read the
Bible to him. Finally, one Saturday at mid-
night, a violent storm arose, that blew out the
lights in the room, and hurled the luckless vic-
tim out of a narrow window into the street.
The sound of fighting and of armed men was
heard, but the piper had disappeared. The
next morning he was found in a neighbouring
ditch, with his arms stretched out in the form
of a cross, dead and coal-black. Luther vouches
for the truth of this story, which he alleges to
have been told him by a parish priest of Gotha,
who had himself heard it from the parish priest
of Molburg, where the event was said to have
taken place.

Amongst the numerous anecdotes of a super-
natural character told by " Dr. Martin " is one
of a "Poltergeist," or "Robin Goodfellow," who

10

i46 GERMAN SOCIETY.

was exorcised by two monks from the guest-
chamber of an inn, and who offered his services
to them in the monastery. They gave him a
corner in the kitchen. The serving-boy used
to torment him by throwing dirty water over
him. After unavailing protests, the spirit hung
the boy up to a beam, but let him down again
before serious harm resulted. Luther states
that this " brownie " was well known by sight
in the neighbouring town (the name of which
he does not give). But by far the larger num-
ber of his stories, which, be it observed, are
warranted as ordinary occurrences, as to the
possibility of which there was no question, are
coloured by that more sinister side of super-
naturalism so much emphasised by the new
theology.

The mediaeval devil was, for the most part,
himself little more than a prankish Riibezahl,
or Robin Goodfellow ; the new Satan of the
Reformers was, in very deed, an arch-fiend, the
enemy of the human race, with whom no truce or
parley might be held. The old folklore belief in
incubi and succubi as the parents of changelings
is brought into connection with the theory of
direct diabolic begettal. Thus Luther relates

FOLKLORE OF THE REFORMATION. 147

how Friedrich, the Elector of Saxony, told him
of a noble family that had sprung from a
siiccubus : " Just," says he, " as the Melusina at
Luxembourg was also such a succubus, or devil ".
In the case referred to. the succubus assumed the
shape of the man's dead wife, and lived with him
and bore him children, until, one day, he swore at
her, when she vanished, leaving only her clothes
behind. After giving it as his opinion that all
such beings and their offspring are wiles of the
devil, he proceeds : "It is truly a grievous
thing that the devil can so plague men that he
begetteth children in their likeness. It is even
so with the nixies in the water, that lure a man
therein, in the shape of wife or maid, with whom
he doth dally and begetteth offspring of them."
The change whereby the beings of the old
naive folklore are transformed into the devil
or his agents is significant of that darker side
of the new theology, which was destined to
issue in those horrors of the witchcraft-mania
that reached their height at the beginning of
the following century.

One more story of a " changeling " before we
leave the subject. Luther gives us the follow-
ing as having come to his knowledge near Hal-

i48 GERMAN SOCIETY.

berstadt, in Saxony. A peasant had a baby,
who sucked out its mother and five nurses, be-
sides eating a great deal. Concluding that it
was a changeling, the peasant sought the advice
of his neighbours, who suggested that he should
take it on a pilgrimage to a neighbouring shrine
of the Mother of God. While he was crossing
a brook on the way, an impish voice from under
the water called out to the infant, whom he was
carrying in a basket. The brat answered from
within the basket, " Ho, ho ! " and the peasant
was unspeakably shocked. When the voice from
the water proceeded to ask the child what it was
after, and received the answer from the hitherto
inarticulate babe that it was going to be laid on
the shrine of the Mother of God, to the end that
it might prosper, the peasant could stand it no
longer, and flung basket and baby into the
brook. The changeling and the little devil
played for a few moments with each other,
rolling over and over, and crying "Ho, ho,
ho ! " and then they disappeared together.
Luther says that these devilish brats may be
generally known by their eating and drinking
too much, and especially by their exhausting
their mother's milk, but they may not develop

FOLKLORE OF THE REFORMATION. 149

any certain signs of their true parentage until
eighteen or nineteen years old. The Princess
of Anhalt had a child which Luther imagined
to be a changeling, and he therefore advised its
being drowned, alleging that such creatures
were only lumps of flesh animated by the devil
or his angels. Some one spoke of a monster
which infested the Netherlands, and which
went about smelling at people like a dog, and
whoever it smelt died. But those that were
smelt did not see it, albeit the bystanders did.
The people had recourse to vigils and masses.
Luther improved the occasion to protest against
the "superstition " of masses for the dead, and
to insist upon his favourite dogma of faith as
the true defence against assaults of the devil.

Among the numerous stories of Satanic com-
pacts, we are told of a monk who ate up a load
of hay, of a debtor who bit off the leg of his
Hebrew creditor and ran off to avoid payment,
and of a woman who bewitched her husband so
that he vomited lizards. Luther observes, with
especial reference to this last case, that lawyers
and judges were far too pedantic with their
witnesses and with their evidence ; that the devil
hardens his clients against torture, and that the

GERMAN SOCIETY.

refusal to confess under torture ought to be of
itself sufficient proof cf dealings with the prince
of darkness. "Towards such," says he, "we
should show no mercy ; I would burn them my-
self." Black magic or witchcraft he proceeds to
characterise as the greatest sin a human being
can be guilty of, as, in fact, high treason against
God Himself — crimen l&sce majestatis divince.
The conversation closes with a storv of how

J

Maximilian's father, the Emperor Friedrich,
who seems to have obtained a reputation for
magic arts, invited a well-known magician to a
banquet, and on his arrival fixed claws on his
hands and hoofs on his feet by his cunning.
His guest, being ashamed, tried to hide the
claws under the table as long as he could, but
finally he had to show them, to his great dis-
comfiture. But he determined to have his
revenge, and asked his host whether he would
permit him to give proofs of his own skill.
The Emperor assenting, there at once arose a
great noise outside the window. Friedrich
sprang up from the table, and leaned out of the
casement to see what was the matter. Imme-
diately an enormous pair of stag's horns ap-
peared on his head, so that he could not draw

FOLKLORE OF THE REFORMATION. 151

it back. Finding the state of the case, the
Emperor exclaimed : u Rid me of them again !
Thou hast won ! " Luther's comment on this
was that he was always glad to see one devil
getting the best of another, as it showed that
some were stronger than others.

All this belongs, roughly speaking, to the
side of the matter which regards popular theo-
logy ; but there is another side which is con-
nected more especially with the New Learning.
This other school, which sought to bring the
somewhat elastic elements of the magical theory
of the universe into the semblance of a systema-
tic whole, is associated with such names as those
of Paracelsus, Cornelius Agrippa, and the Abbot
von Trittenheim. The fame of the first named
was so great throughout Germany that when he
visited any town the occasion was looked upon
as an event of exceeding importance.1 Para-
celsus fully shared in the beliefs of his age, in
spite of his brilliant insights on certain occa-
sions. What his science was like may be
imagined when we learn that he seriously
speaks of animals who conceive through the

1 Cf. Sebastian Franck, Chronica, for an account of a
visit of Paracelsus to Niirnberg.

1 5 2 GERMAN SOCIETY.

mouth, of basilisks whose glance is deadly, of
petrified storks changed into snakes, of the still-
born young of the lion which are afterwards
brought to life by the roar of their sire, of frogs
falling in a shower of rain, of ducks transformed
into frogs, and of men born from beasts ; the
menstruation of women he regarded as a venom
whence proceeded flies, spiders, earwigs, and
all sorts of loathsome vermin ; night was caused,
not by the absence of the sun, but by the pre-
sence of the stars, which were the positive cause
of the darkness. He relates having seen a
magnet capable of attracting the eyeball from
its socket as far as the tip of the nose ; he knows
of salves to close the mouth so effectually that it
has to be broken open again by mechanical
means, and he writes learnedly on the infallible
signs of witchcraft. By mixing horse-dung
with human semen he believed he was able
to produce a medium from which, by chemical
treatment in a retort, a diminutive human being,
or homunculus, as he called it, could be produced.
The spirits of the elements, the sylphs of the air,
the gnomes of the earth, the salamanders of the
fire, and the undines of the water, were to him
real and undoubted existences in nature.

FOLKLORE OF THE REFORMATION. 153

Strange as all these beliefs seem to us now, they
were a very real factor in the intellectual concep-
tions of the Renaissance period, no less than of the
Middle Ages, and amidst them there is to befound
at times a foreshadowing of more modern know-
ledge. Many other persons were also more or
less associated with the magical school, amongst
them Franz von Sickingen. Reuchlin himself,
by his Hebrew studies, and especially by his
introduction of the Kabbala to Gentile readers,
also contributed a not unimportant influence in
determining the course of the movement. The
line between the so-called black magic, or
operations conducted through the direct agency
of evil spirits, and white magic, which sought to
subject nature to the human will by the dis-
covery of her mystical and secret laws, or the
character of the quasi-personified intelligent
principles under whose form nature presented
herself to their minds, had never throughout
the Middle Ages been very clearly defined.
The one always had a tendency to shade off
into the other, so that even Roger Bacon's
practices were, although not condemned, at
least looked upon somewhat doubtfully by the
Church. At the time of which we treat, how-

154 GERMAN SOCIETY.

ever, the interest in such matters had become
universal amongst all intelligent persons. The
scientific imagination at the close of the Middle
Ages and during the Renaissance period was
mainly occupied with three questions : the dis-
covery of the means of transmuting the baser
metals into gold, or otherwise of producing that
object of universal desire; to discover the Elixir
Vitse, by which was generally understood the
invention of a drug which would have the effect
of curing all diseases, restoring man to perennial
youth, and, in short, prolonging human life
indefinitely ; and, finally, the search for the
Philosopher's Stone, the happy possessor of
which would not only be able to achieve the
first two, but also, since it was supposed to con-
tain the quintessence of all the metals, and
therefore of all the planetary influences to which
the metals corresponded, would have at his
command all the forces which mould the des-
tinies of men. In especial connection with the
latter object of research may be noted the uni-
versal interest in astrology, whose practitioners
were to be found at every Court, from that of
the Emperor himself to that of the most insigni-
ficant prince or princelet, and whose advice was

FOLKLORE OF THE REFORMATION. 155

sought and carefully heeded on all important
occasions. Alchemy and astrology were thus
the recognised physical sciences of the age,
under the auspices of which a Copernicus and a
Tycho Brahe were born and educated.

CHAPTER V.

THE GERMAN TOWN.

FROM what has been said the reader may
form for himself an idea of the intellectual and
social life of the German town of the period.
The wealthy patrician class, whose mainstay
politically was the Rath, gave the social tone to
the whole. In spite of the sharp and some-
times brutal fashion in which class distinctions
asserted themselves then, as throughout the
Middle Ages, there was none of that aloofness
between class and class which characterises the
bourgeois society of the present day. Each
town, were it great or small, was a little
world in itself, so that every citizen knew
every other citizen more or less. The schools
attached to its ecclesiastical institutions were
practically free of access to all the children
whose parents could find the means to maintain
them during their studies ; and consequently the
intellectual differences between the different
classes were by no means necessarily propor-
tionate to the difference in social position. So

(156)

THE GERMAN TOWN. 157

far as culture and material prosperity were con-
cerned, the towns of Bavaria and Franconia,
Munich, Augsburg, Regensburg, and perhaps
above all Nlirnberg, represented the high-
water mark of mediaeval civilisation as regards
town-life. On entering the burg, should it have
happened to be in time of peace and in day-
light, the stranger would clear the drawbridge
and the portcullis without much challenge,
passing along streets lined with the houses
and shops of the burghers, in whose open
frontages the master and his apprentices and
gesellen plied their trades, discussing eagerly
over their work the politics of the town, and at
this period probably the theological questions
which were uppermost in men's minds, our
visitor would make his way to some hostelry,
in whose courtyard he would dismount from his
horse, and, entering the common room, or
Stube, with its rough but artistic furniture of
carved oak, partake of his flagon of wine or
beer, according to the district in which he was
travelling, whilst the host cracked a rough and
possibly coarse jest with the other guests, or
narrated to them the latest gossip of the city.
The stranger would probably find himself be-

158 GERMAN SOCIETY,

fore long the object of interrogatories respecting
his native place and the object of his journey
(although his dress would doubtless have given
general evidence of this), whether he were a
merchant or a travelling scholar or a practiser
of medicine ; for into one of these categories it
might be presumed the humble but not servile
traveller would fall. Were he on a diplomatic
mission from some potentate he would be
travelling at the least as a knight or a noble,
with spurs and armour, and moreover would be
little likely to lodge in a public house of enter-
tainment.

In the Stube he would probably see drinking
heavily, representatives of the ubiquitous Lands-
knechte, the mercenary troops enrolled for im-
perial purposes by the Emperor Maximilian
towards the end of the previous century, who
in the intervals of war were disbanded and
wandered about spending their pay, and thus
constituted an excessively disintegrative element
in the life of the time. A contemporary writer x
•describes them as the curse of Germany, and
stigmatises them as "unchristian, God-forsaken
folk, whose hand is ever ready in striking, stab-
1 Sebastian Franck, Chronica, ccxvii.

THE GERMAN TOWN. 159

bing, robbing, burning, slaying, gaming, who
delight in wine-bibbing, whoring, blaspheming,
and in the making of widows and orphans ".

Presently perhaps a noise without indicates
the arrival of a new guest. All hurry forth
into the courtyard, and their curiosity is more
keenly whetted when they perceive by the
yellow knitted scarf round the neck of the
new-comer that he is an itinerans scholasticus,
or travelling scholar, who brings with him
not only the possibility of news from the outer
world, so important in an age when journals
were non-existent, and communications irregular
and deficient, but also a chance of beholding
wonder-workings, as well as of being cured
of the ailments which local skill had treated
in vain. Already surrounded by a crowd of
admirers waiting for the words of wisdom to fall
from his lips, he would start on that exordium
which bore no little resemblance to the patter of
the modern quack, albeit interlarded with many
a Latin quotation and great display of mediaeval
learning. " Good people and worthy citizens of
this town," he might say, " behold in me the
great master . . . prince of necromancers,
astrologer, second mage, chiromancer, agro-

160 GERMAN SOCIETY.

mancer, pyromancer, hydromancer. My learn-
ing is so profound that were all the works of
Plato and Aristotle lost to the world, I could
from memory restore them with more elegance
than before. The miracles of Christ were not
so great as those which I can perform wherever
and as often as I will. Of all alchemists I am
the first, and my powers are such that I can
obtain all things that man desires. My shoe-
buckles contain more learning than the heads
of Galen and Avicenna, and my beard has
more experience than all your high schools. I
am monarch of all learning. I can heal you of
all diseases. By my secret arts I can procure
you wealth. I am the philosopher of philoso-
phers. I can provide you with spells to bind
the most potent of the devils in Hell. I can
cast your nativities and foretell all that shall
befall you, since I have that which can unlock
the secrets of all things that have been, that are,
and that are to come." 1 Bringing forth strange-
looking phials, covered with cabalistic signs, a
crystal globe and an astrolabe, followed by an

1 Cf. Trittheim's letter to Wirdung of Hasfurt regarding
Faust. J. Tritthemii Epistolarum Familiarum, 1536, bk.
ii., ep. 47 ; also the works of Paracelsus.

THE GERMAN TOWN. 161

imposing scroll of parchment inscribed with mys-
terious Hebraic-looking characters, the travel-
ling student would probably drive a roaring
trade amongst the assembled townsmen in love-
philtres, cures for the ague and the plague, and
amulets against them, horoscopes, predictions of
fate and the rest of his stock-in-trade.

As evening approaches, our traveller strolls
forth into the streets and narrow lanes of the
town, lined with overhanging gables that al-
most meet overhead and shut out the light of
the afternoon sun, so that twilight seems already
to have fallen. Observing that the burghers,
with their wives and children, the work of the
day being done, are all wending toward the
western gate, he goes along with the stream till,
passing underneath the heavy portcullis and
through the outer rampart, he finds himself in
the plain outside, across which a rugged bridle-
path leads to a large quadrangular meadow,
rough and more or less worn, where a con-
siderable crowd has already assembled. This
is the Allerwiese, or public pleasure ground
of the town. Here there are not only high
festivities on Sundays and holidays, but every
fine evening in summer numbers of citizens

ii

1 6 2 GERMAN SO C1E T Y.

gather together to watch the apprentices exer-
cising their strength in athletic feats, and
competing with one another in various sports,
such as running, wrestling, spear-throwing,
sword-play, and the like, wherein the inferior
rank sought to imitate and even emulate the
knighthood, whilst the daughters of the city
watched their progress with keen interest and
applauding laughter. As the shadows deepen
and darkness falls upon the plain, our visitor
joins the groups which are now fast leaving the
meadow, and repasses the great embrasure just
as the rushlights begin to twinkle in the windows,
and a swinging oil-lamp to cast a dim light here
and there in the streets. But as his company
passes out of a narrow lane debouching on to
the chief market-place their progress is stopped
by the sudden rush of a mingled crowd of un-
ruly apprentices and journeymen returning from
their sports, with hot heads well beliquored.
Then from another side street there is a sudden
flare of torches borne aloft by guildsmen come
out to quell the tumult and to send off the ap-
prentices to their dwellings, whilst the watch
also bears down and carries off some of the
more turbulent of the journeymen to pass the

THE GERMAN TOWN. 163

night in one of the towers which guard the city
wall. At last, however, the visitor reaches his
inn by the aid of a friendly guildsman and his
torch ; and retiring to his chamber with its straw-
covered floor, rough oaken bedstead, hard mat-
tress, and coverings not much better than horse-
cloths, he falls asleep as the bell of the minster
tolls out ten o'clock over the now dark and
silent city.

Such approximately would have been the view
of a German city in the sixteenth century as
presented to a traveller in a time of peace. More
stirring times, however, were as frequent, — times
when the tocsin rang out from the steeple all
night long, calling the citizens to arms. By such
scenes, needless to say, the year of the Peasant
War was more than usually characterised. In
the days when every man carried arms and
knew how to use them, when the fighting
instinct was imbibed with the mother's milk,
when every week saw some street brawl, often
attended by loss of life, and that by no means
always among the most worthless and dissolute
of the inhabitants, every dissatisfaction immedi-
ately turned itself into an armed revolt, whether
it were of the apprentices or the journeymen

1 64 GERMAN SOCIETY.

against the guild-masters, the body of the towns-
men against the patriciate, the town itself against
its feudal superior, where it had one, or of the
knighthood against the princes. The extremity
to which disputes can at present be carried
without resulting in a breach of the peace, as
evinced in modern political and trade conflicts,
exacerbated though some of them are, was a
thing unknown in the Middle Ages, and indeed
to any considerable extent until comparatively
recent times. The sacred right of insurrec-
tion was then a recognised fact of life, and but
very little straining of a dispute led to a resort
to arms. In the subsequent chapters we have
to deal with the more important of those out-
bursts to which the ferment due to the dis-
solution of the mediaeval system of things, then
beginning throughout Central Europe, gave
rise, of which the religious side is represented
by what is known as the Reformation.

CHAPTER VI.

THE REVOLT OF THE KNIGHTHOOD.

WE have already pointed out in more than one
place the position to which the smaller nobility,
or the knighthood, had been reduced by the
concatenation of causes which was bringing
about the dissolution of the old mediaeval order
of things, and, as a consequence, ruining the
knights both economically and politically : — eco-
nomically by the rise of capitalism as repre-
sented by the commercial syndicates of the cities ;
by the unprecedented power and wealth of the
city confederations, especially of the Hanseatic j
League ; by the rising importance of the newly-
developed world-market; by the growing luxury
and the enormous rise in the prices of commodi-
ties concurrently with the reduction in value of
the feudal land-tenures ; and by the limitation of
the possibilities of acquiring wealth by highway
robbery, owing to imperial constitutions on the
one hand and increased powers of defence on the

part of the trading community on the other : —

(165)

1 66 GERMAN SOCIETY.

politically, by the new modes of warfare in which
artillery and infantry, composed of compara-
tively well-drilled mercenaries (Landsknechte\
were rapidly making inroads into the omnipo-
tence of the ancient feudal chivalry, and reduc-
ing jhe importance of individual skill or prowess
in the handling of weapons, and by the develop-
ment of the power of the princes or higher
nobility, partly due to the influence which the
Roman civil law now began to exercise over
thlTolder ^customary constitution of the Empire,
and partly to the budding centralism of autho-
rity— which in France and England became a
national centralisation, but in Germany, in spite
of the temporary ascendancy of Charles V., finally
issued in a provincial centralisation in which the

princes were de_ facto independent monarchs.

The imperial constitution of 1495, forbidding
private war, applied, it must be remembered,
only to the lesser nobility and not to the higher,
thereby placing the former in a decidedly igno-
minious position as regards their feudal superiors.
And though this particular enactment had little
immediate result, yet it was none the less re-
sented as a blow struck at the old knightly
privilege.

THE REVOLT OF THE KNIGHTHOOD. 167

The mental attitude of the knighthood in the
face of this progressing change in their position
was naturally an ambiguous one, composed partly
of a desire to hark back to the haughty inde-
pendence of feudalism, and partly of sympathy
with the growing discontent among other classes
and with the new spirit generally. In order that
the knights might succeed in recovering their
old or even in maintaining their actual position
against the higher nobility, the princes, backed as
these now largely were by the imperial power, the
co-operation of the cities was absolutely essential
to them, but the obstacles in the way of such
a co-operation proved insurmountable. The
towns hated the knights for their lawless prac-
tices, which rendered trade unsafe and not in-
frequently cost the lives of the citizens. The
knights for the most part, with true feudal hauteur,
scorned and despised the artisans and traders
who had no territorial family name and were un-
exercised in the higher chivalric arts. The griev-
ances of the two parties were, moreover, not
identical, although they had their origin in the
same causes. The cities were in the main solely
concerned to maintain their old independent
position, and especially to curb the growing dis-

1 68 GERMAN SOCIETY.

position at this time of the other estates to use
them as milch cows from which to draw the
taxation necessary to the maintenance of the
Empire. For example, at the Reichstag opened
at Nurnberg on the i/th November, 1522—
to discuss the questions of the establishment of
perpetual peace within the Empire, of organis-
ing an energetic resistance to the inroads of the
Turks, and of placing on a firm foundation the
Imperial Privy Council (Kammergericht) and
the Supreme Council (Reichsregimenf) — at
which were represented twenty-six imperial
towns, thirty-eight high prelates, eighteen
princes, and twenty-nine counts and barons—
the representatives of the cities complained
grievously that their attendance was reduced to
a farce, since they were always out-voted, and
hence obliged to accept the decisions of the
other estates. They stated that their position
was no longer bearable, and for the first time
drew up an Act of Protest, which further com-
plained of the delay in the decisions of the
imperial courts ; of their sufferings from the
right of private war which was still allowed to
subsist in defiance of the constitution ; of the
increase of customs-stations on the part of the

THE REVOLT OF THE KNIGHTHOOD. 169

princes and prince-prelates ; and, finally, of the
debasement of the coinage due to the unscru-
pulous practices of these notables and of the
Jews. The only sympathy the other estates
vouchsafed to the plaints of the cities was with
regard to the right of private war, which the
higher nobles were also anxious to suppress
amongst the lower, though without prejudice of
course to their own privileges in this line. All
the other articles of the Act of Protest were
coolly waived aside. From all this it will be
seen that not much co-operation wras to be
expected between such heterogeneous bodies as
the knighthood and the free towns, in spite
[of their common interest in checking the

*-•. O 1^,, , *r 4.

threateningly advancing power of the princes
and the central imperial authority, which was
for the most part manned and manipulated by
the princes.

Amid the decaying knighthood there was, as
we have already intimated, one figure which
stood out head and shoulders above every
other noble of the time, whether prince or
knight ; and that was Franz von Sickingen.
He has been termed, not without truth, " the
last flowTer of German chivalry," since in him

170 GERMAN SOCIETY.

the old knightly qualities flashed up in conjunc-
tion with the old knightly power and splendour
with a brightness hardly known even in the
palmiest days of mediaeval life. It was, however,
the last flicker of the light of German chivalry.
With the death of Sickingen and the collapse
of his revolt the knighthood of Central Europe
ceased any longer to play an independent part
in history.

Sickingen, although technically only one of
the lower nobility, was deemed about the time
of Luther's appearance to hold the immediate
destinies of the Empire in his hand. Wealthy,
inspiring confidence and enthusiasm as a
leader, possessed of more than one powerful
and strategically-situated stronghold, he held
court at his favourite residence, the Castle of
the Landstuhl, in the Rhenish Palatinate, in
a style which many a prince of the Empire
might have envied. As honoured guests were
to be found attending on him, humanists, poets,
minstrels, partisans of the new theology, astro-
logers, alchemists, and men of letters generally ;
in short, the whole intelligence and culture of
the period. Foremost among these, and chief
confidant of Sickingen, was the knight, cour-

THE REVOLT OF THE KNIGHTHOOD. 171

tier, poet, essayist and pamphleteer, Ulrich von
Hutten, whose pen was ever ready to champion
with unstinted enthusiasm the cause of the pro-
gressive ideas of his age. He first took up
the cudgels against the obscurantists on behalf
of Humanism as represented by Erasmus and
Reuchlin, the latter of whom he bravely defended
in his dispute with the Inquisition and the monks
of Cologne, and in his contributions to the Epis-
tolce Obscurorum Virorum we see the youthful
ardour of the Renaissance in full blast in its
onslaught on the forces of mediaeval obstruc-
tion. Unlike most of those with whom he was
first associated, Hutten passed from being the
upholder of the New Learning to the role
of champion of the Reformation ; and it was
largely through his influence that Sickingen
took up the cause of Luther and his movement.
Sickingen had been induced by Charles V.
to assist him in an abortive attempt to invade
France in 1521, from which campaign he had
returned without much benefit either material or
moral, save that Charles was left heavily in his
debt. The accumulated hatred of generations for
the priesthood had made Sickingen a willing in-
strument in the hands of the reforming party

1 7 2 GERMAN SOCIETY.

and believing that Charles now lay to some
extent in his power, he considered the moment
opportune for putting his long-cherished scheme
into operation for reforming the constitution of
the Empire. This reformation consisted, as
was to be expected, in placing his own order
on a firm footing, and of effectually curbing the
power of the other estates, especially that of the
prelates. Sickingen wished to make the Em-
peror and the lower nobility the decisive factors
in his new scheme of things political. The Em-
peror, it so happened, was for the moment away in
Spain, and Sickingen's colleagues of the knightly
order were becoming clamorous at the unworthy
position into which they found themselves
rapidly being driven. The feudal exactions
of their princely lieges had reached a point
which passed all endurance, and since they
were practically powerless in the Reichstags no
outlet was left for their discontent save by open
revolt. Impelled not less by his own inclina-
tions than by the pressure of his companions,
foremost among whom was Hutten, Sickingen
decided at once to open the campaign.

Hutten, it would appear, attempted to enter
into negotiations for the co-operation of the

THE REVOLT OF THE KNIGHTHOOD. 173

towns and of the peasants. So far as can be
seen, Strassburg and one or two other imperial
cities returned favourable answers ; but the pre-
cise measure of Hutten's success cannot be ascer-
tained, owing to the fact that all the documents
relating to the matter perished in the destruction
of Sickingen's Castle of Ebernburg. It is
certain, however, that operations were begun
before any definite assurances of help had been
obtained, although had the first attempts had
any appearance of success there is little doubt
that such help would have been forthcoming.

The campaign was unfortunate from the be-
ginning. Nevertheless, but one of the associated
knights saw that the moment was inopportune.
The rest were confident of success, and a pre-
text was speedily found in the fact that Sickin-
gen's feudal superior, the Archbishop of Trier
(Treves), had refused to compel two councillors
of that city to repay him 5000 Rhenish guilders
(gulden) which he had paid as ransom for
them to a certain knight, Gerhard Borner, who
had taken them prisoners. This was a suffi-
cient casus belli for those times ; and Sickingen
thereupon issued a manifesto in which he de-
clared himself the champion of the gospel,

1 7 4 GERMAN SO CIE TY.

and announced his intention to free the sub-
jects of the archbishop from the temporal yoke
of their tyrant, who had acted against God and
the imperial majesty, and from the spiritual
yoke of godless priests, and to place them in
possession of that liberty which the gospel
(i.e., the new gospel of Luther) alone could
afford.

It should be premised that on the i3th of
August, previous to this declaration of war,
a " Brotherly Convention " had been signed
by a number of the knights, by which Sickin-
gen was appointed their captain, and they bound
themselves to submit to no jurisdiction save
their own, and pledged themselves to mutual
aid in war in case of hostilities against any
one of their number. Through this " Treaty
of Landau," Sickingen had it in his power to
assemble a considerable force at a moment's
notice. Consequently, a few days after the issue
of the above manifesto, on the 2 7th August,
1522, Sickingen was able to start from the
Castle of Ebernburg with an army of 5000
foot and 1 500 knights, besides artillery, in the
full confidence that he was about to destroy the
position of the Palatine prince-prelate and raise

THE REVOLT OF THE KNIGHTHOOD. 175

himself without delay to the chief power on
the Rhine. The grand chamberlain of the
celebrated patron of letters and Humanism,
Albrecht, Archbishop of Mainz, Frowers von
Hutten, was in the conspiracy ; and it is almost
certain that Albrecht himself was secretly in ac-
cord with Sickingen's plan for the destruction of
his electoral neighbour. This is shown by the
fact that when the Archbishop of Trier appealed
to him, as his colleague, for assistance, Albrecht
made a number of excuses which enabled him to
delay the sending of reinforcements until they
were too late to be of any use, whilst at the
same time numbers of his retainers and subjects
served under Sickingen's banner.

By an effective piece of audacity, that of
sporting the imperial flag and the Burgundian
cross, Franz spread abroad the idea that he was
acting on behalf of the Emperor, then absent in
Spain ; and this largely contributed to the re-
sult that his army speedily rose to 5000 knights
and 10,000 footmen. The Imperial Diet at
Niirnberg now intervened, and ordered Sick-
ingen to cease the operations he had already
begun, threatening him with the ban of the
Empire and a fine of 2000 marks if he did not

1 76 GERMAN SOCIETY.

obey. To this summons Franz sent a charac-
teristically impudent reply, l and light-heartedly
continued the campaign, regardless of the warn-
ing which an astrologer had given him some
time previously, that the year 1522 or 1523
would probably be fatal to him. It is evident
that this campaign, begun so late in the year,
was regarded by Sickingen and the other
leaders as merely a preliminary canter to a
larger and more widespread movement the
following spring, since on this occasion the
Swabian and Franconian knighthood do not
appear to have been even invited to take part
in it.

After an easy progress, during which several

1 Franz said to the bystanders when the messengers of
the Council appeared : " Look at these old fiddles of the
Regiment ; only the dancers lack. There is no dearth of
commands, but only of those who heed them ; " and turning
to the nuncios themselves, he bade them tell the Imperial
Stadthalter and the other gentlemen of the Council that
" they might make themselves easy, for he was as good a
servant of the Emperor as themselves. He would, if he
had enough followers, so work it that the Emperor would
be able to get far more land and gold in Germany than he
could ever get abroad. He only meant to give Richard of
Trier a slight drubbing, and to soak his crowns for him
which he had gotten from France."

THE REVOLT OF THE KNIGHTHOOD. 177

trifling places, the most important being St.
Wendel, were taken, Franz with his army
arrived on the 8th of September before the
gates of Trier. He had hoped to capture the
town by surprise, and was indeed not without
some expectation of co-operation and help from
the citizens themselves. On his arrival he shot
letters within the walls summoning the inhabit-
ants to take his part against their tyrant ; but
either through the unwillingness of the burghers
to act with the knights, or through the vigilance
of the archbishop, they were without effect.
The gates remained closed ; and in answer to
Sickingen's summons to surrender, Richard
replied that he would find him in the city if he
could get inside. In the meantime Sickingen's
friends had signally failed in their attempts to
obtain supplies and reinforcements for him, in
the main owing to the energetic action of some
of the higher nobles. The Archbishop of Trier
showed himself as much a soldier as a church-
man ; and after a week's siege, during which
Sickingen made five assaults on the city, his
powder ran out, and he was forced to retire.
He at once made his way back to Ebern-
burg, where he intended to pass the winter.

12

1 78 GERMAN SOCIETY.

since he saw that it was useless to continue the
campaign, with his own army diminishing and
the hoped-for supplies not appearing, whilst the
forces of his antagonists augmented daily. In
his stronghold of Ebernburg he could rely on
being secure from all attack until he was able
to again take the field on the offensive, as he
anticipated doing in the spring.

There is some doubt as to the events which
occurred during this retreat to Ebernburg.
Sickingen's adversaries asserted that not only
did his army destroy churches and monasteries,
but that the houses of the peasants in the sur-
rounding country were plundered and burnt.
His friends, on the other hand, maintain with
equal vehemence that Sickingen and his fol-
lowers confined themselves to wiping out of
existence as many as possible of the hated
ecclesiastical foundations.

In spite of the obvious failure of the autumnal
campaign, the cause of the knighthood did not
by any means look irretrievably desperate, since
there was always the possibility of successful
recruitments the following spring. Ulrich von
Hutten was doing his utmost in Wurtemberg
and Switzerland to scrape together men and

THE REVOLT OF THE KNIGHTHOOD. 179

money, though up to this time without much
success, while other emissaries of Sickingen
were working with the same object in Breisgau
and other parts of Southern Germany. Relying
on these expected reinforcements, Franz was
confident of victory when he should again
take the field, and in the meantime he felt
himself quite secure in one or other of his
strong places, which had recently undergone
extensive repairs and seemed to be impreg-
nable. In this anticipation he was deceived, as
will shortly be seen, for he had not reckoned
with the new and more potent weapons of
attack which were replacing the battering-ram
and other mediaeval besieging appliances.

The princes, meanwhile, were not inactive.
Immediately after the abortive attack on Richard
•of Trier, Sickingen was placed under the ban of
the Empire (Oct. 8), but although the latter had
temporarily disbanded his army it was impos-
sible for them to attack him at once. They
therefore contented themselves for the moment
t>y wreaking their vengeance on those of his
supporters who were more easily to be reached.
Albrecht of Mainz, whose public policy had
been that of " sitting on the fence all round,"

i8o GERMAN SOCIETY.

was fined 25,000 gulden for his lukewarmness in
supporting his colleague, the Elector of Trier.
Kronberg, near Frankfort, which was held by
Sickingen's son-in-law, Hardtmuth, was taken by
a force of 30,000 men (?) ; Frowen von Hutten,
the cousin of Ulrich, was driven from his Castle
of Saalmiinster and dispossessed of his estates,
whilst a number of the smaller fry equally felt
the heavy hand of the princely power. The
chastisement of more distant adherents to the
cause of the knighthood, like the Counts of
Fiirstenberg and Zollern and the knights of
Franconia, was left over until the leader of the
movement had been dealt with.

This latter task was set about energetically,
as soon as the winter was past, by the three
princes who had specially taken in hand the
suppression of the revolt, Archbishop Richard
of Trier, Prince Ludwig of the Pfalz, and
Count Phillip of Hesse. In February, Sickin-
gen's second son, Hans, was taken prisoner,
and shortly after the Castle of Wartenberg
was captured. An armistice which Sickingen
had asked for in order that the reinforcements
he expected might have time to arrive, was
refused, since the princes saw that their only

THE REVOLT OF THE KNIGHTHOOD. 181

chance of immediately crushing his power was
to attack him at once. Towards the end of
April a large army of cavalry, infantry, and
siege artillery was called together at Kreuznach,
not far from Sickingen's Castle of Ebernburg.
Franz, however, was no longer there. He
appears to have left Ebernburg for his strongest
fortress at Landstuhl some weeks previously,
though how and when is uncertain. Here he
hoped to be able to hold out for at least three
or four months, by which time his friends could
deliver him ; and when the army of the three
princes appeared before the castle he sent back
a mocking answer to their summons to sur-
render, to the effect that he had new walls and
they had new guns, so they could now see which
were the stronger. But Sickingen had not
realised the power of the new projectiles ; and
in a week after the opening of the bombard-
ment, on the 2Qth of April, the newly-fortified
castle on which he had staked all his hopes was
little better than a defenceless heap of ruins. In
the course of the bombardment Franz himself,
as he stood at an embrasure watching the pro-
gress of the siege, was flung against a splintered
joist, owing to the gun-stand against which he

182 GERMAN SOCIETY.

was leaning being overturned by a cannon shot.
With his side torn open he was carried down into
a dark rocky vault of the castle, realising at last
that all was lost. " Where are now," he cried,
" my knights and my friends, who promised me
so much and who have performed so little ?
Where is Fiirstenberg ? where Zollern ? where
are they of Strassburg and of the Brotherhood ?
Wherefore, let none place their trust in great
possessions nor in the encouragements of men."
It must be alleged, however, in their excuse,
that his friends doubtless shared Franz's confi-
dence in the impregnability of the Landstuhl, and
were not aware of the imminent straits he had
been in since the beginning of the attack. The
messenger he had sent to the distant Fursten-
berg had been captured by the army of the
allied princes ; Zollern knew of the need of his
leader only with the news of his death ; Hutten's
efforts to obtain help in Switzerland had been
in vain.

Seeing that now all was over and he himself
on the point of death, Sickingen wrote to the
princes, requesting them to come and see him.
The firing at once ceased, and negotiations
were entered upon for the surrender of the

THE REVOLT OF THE KNIGHTHOOD. 183

castle. On the 6th of May Sickingen agreed
to the articles of capitulation, which included
the surrender of himself and the rest of the
knights in the castle as prisoners of war, his
other retainers giving up their arms and leaving
the castle on the following day. The Land-
stuhl with all its contents was to fall, of course,
into the hands of the besiegers. As Franz
signed the articles, he remarked to the am-
bassadors : " Well, I shall not be long your
prisoner ".

On the 7th of May the princes entered the
castle and were at once taken to the under-
ground chamber where Franz lay dying. He
was so near his end that he could scarcely dis-
tinguish his three arch-enemies one from the
other. " My dear lord," he said to the Count
Palatine, his feudal superior, " I had not thought
that I should end thus," taking off his cap and
giving him his hand. " What has impelled
thee, Franz," asked the Archbishop of Trier,
" that thou hast so laid waste and harmed me
and my poor people ? " "Of that it were too
long to speak," answered Sickingen, " but I
have done nought without cause. I go now to
stand before a greater Lord." Here it is worthy

184 GERMAN SOCIETY.

of remark that the princes treated Franz with
all the knightliness and courtesy which were
customary between social equals in the days of
chivalry, addressing him at most rather as a
rebellious child than as an insurgent subject.
The Prince of Hesse was about to give utter-
ance to a reproach, but he was interrupted by
the Count Palatine, who told him that he
must not quarrel with a dying man. The
count's chamberlain said some sympathetic
words to Franz, who replied to him : u My dear
chamberlain, it matters little about me. It is not
I who am the cock round which they are danc-
ing." When the princes had withdrawn, his
chaplain asked him if he would confess ; but
Franz replied : "I have confessed to God in
my heart," whereupon the chaplain gave him
absolution ; and as he went to fetch the host
" the last of the knights " passed quietly away,
alone and abandoned. It is related by Spala-
tin that after his death some peasants and
domestics placed his body in an old armour-
chest, in which they had to double the head
on to the knees. The chest was then let
down by a rope from the rocky eminence on
which stood the now ruined castle, and was

THE REVOLT OF THE KNIGHTHOOD. 185

buried beneath a small chapel in the village
below.

The scene we have just described in the
castle vault meant not merely the tragedy of a
hero's death, nor merely the destruction of a
faction or party. It meant the end of an epoch.
With Sickingen's death one of the most salient
and picturesque elements in the mediaeval life
of Central Europe received its death-blow. The
knighthood as a distinct factor in the polity of
Europe henceforth existed no more.

Spalatin relates that on the death of Sickingen
the princely party anticipated as easy a victory
over the religious revolt as they had achieved
over the knighthood. " The mock Emperor
is dead," so the phrase went, ''and the mock
Pope will soon be dead also." Hutten, already
an exile in Switzerland, did not many months
survive his patron and leader, Sickingen. The
role which Erasmus played in this miserable
tragedy was only what was to be expected from
the moral cowrardice which seemed ingrained
in the character of the great Humanist leader.
Erasmus had already begun to fight shy of the
Reformation movement, from which he was
about to separate himself definitely. He seized

1 86 GERMAN SOCIETY,

the present opportunity to quarrel with Hutten ;
and to Hutten's somewhat bitter attacks on him
in consequence he replied with ferocity in his
Spongia Erasmi adversus aspergines Hutteni.

Hutten had had to fly from Basel to Miil-
hausen and thence to Zurich, in the last
stages of syphilitic disease. He was kindly
received by the reformer, Zwingli of Zurich,
who advised him to try the waters of Pfeffers,
and gave him letters of recommendation to
the abbot of that place. He returned, in
no wise benefited, to Zurich, when Zwingli
again befriended the sick knight, and sent him
to a friend of his, the "reformed" pastor of the
little island of "Ufenau," at the other end of the
lake, where after a few weeks' suffering he died
in abject destitution, leaving, it is said, nothing
behind him but his pen. The disease from
which Hutten suffered the greater part of his
life, at that time a comparatively new importa-
tion and much more formidable even than now-
a-days, may well have contributed to an irasci-
bility of temper and to a certain recklessness
which the typical free-lance of the Reformation
in its early period exhibited. Hutten was never
a theologian, and the Reformation seems to

THE REVOLT OF THE KNIGHTHOOD. 187

have attracted him mainly from its political
side as implying the assertion of the dawning
feeling of German nationality as against the
hated enemies of freedom of thought and the
new light, the clerical satellites of the Roman
see. He was a true son of his time, in his vices
no less than in his virtues ; and no one will deny
his partiality for " wine, women, and play ".
There is reason, indeed, to believe that the
latter at times during his later career provided
his sole means of subsistence.

The hero of the Reformation, Luther, with
whom Melancthon may be associated in this
matter, could be no less pusillanimous on occa-
sion than the hero of the New Learning, Eras-
mus. Luther undoubtedly saw in Sickingen's
revolt a means of weakening the Catholic
powers against which he had to fight, and at
its inception he avowedly favoured the enter-
prise. In " Karsthans," the brochure quoted
from in the last chapter, Luther is represented
as the incarnation of Christian resignation and
mildness, and as talking of twelve legions of
angels and deprecating any appeal to force as
unbefitting the character of an evangelical
apostle. That such, however, was not his

1 88 GERMAN SOCIETY.

habitual attitude is evident to all who are in
the least degree acquainted with his real con-
duct and utterances. On one occasion he
wrote : " If they (the priests) continue their
mad ravings it seems to me that there would
be no better method and medicine to stay them
than that kings and princes did so with force,
armed themselves and attacked these pernicious
people who do poison all the world, and once for
all did make an end of their doings with weapons
not with words. For even as we punish thieves
with the sword, murderers with the rope, and
heretics with fire, wherefore do we not lay
hands on these pernicious teachers of damna-
tion, on popes, on cardinals, bishops, and the
swarm of the Roman Sodom — yea, with every
weapon which lieth within our reach, and where-
fore do we not wash our hands in their blood ? "
It is, however, in a manifesto published in
July, 1522, just before Sickingen's attack on
the Archbishop of Trier, for which enterprise
it was doubtless intended as a justification, that
Luther expresses himself in unmeasured terms
against the " biggest wolves," the bishops, and
calls upon " all dear children of God and all
true Christians " to drive them out by force

THE REVOLT OF THE KNIGHTHOOD. 189

from the " sheep-stalls ". In this pamphlet,
entitled " Against the falsely called spiritual
order of the Pope and the bishops," he says :
" It were better that every bishop were mur-
dered, every foundation or cloister rooted out,
than that one soul should be destroyed, let
alone that all souls should be lost for the sake
of their worthless trumpery and idolatry. Of
what use are they who thus live in lust, nour-
ished by the sweat and labour of others, and are
a stumbling block to the word of God ? They
fear bodily uproar and despise spiritual destruc-
tion. Are they wise and honest people ? If
they accepted God's word and sought the life
of the soul, God would be with them, for He is
a God of peace, and they need fear no uprising ;
but if they will not hear God's word, but rage
and rave with bannings, burnings, killings, and
every evil, what do they better deserve than a
strong uprising which shall sweep them from
the earth ? And we would smile did it happen.
As the heavenly wisdom saith : ' Ye have hated
my chastisement and despised my doctrine ;
behold, I will also laugh at ye in your distress,
and will mock ye when misfortune shall fall
upon your heads'." In the same document he

190 GERMAN SOCIETY.

denounces the bishops as an accursed race, as
" thieves, robbers, and usurers". Swine, horses,
stones, and wood were not so destitute of under-
standing as the German people under the sway
of them and their Pope. The religious houses
are similarly described as "brothels, low taverns,
and murder dens ". He winds up this document,
which he calls his bull, by proclaiming that " all
who contribute body, goods, and honour that
the rule of the bishops may be destroyed are
God's dear children and true Christians, obeying
God's command and fighting against the devil's
order ; " and on the other hand, that " all who
give the bishops a willing obedience are the
devil's own servants, and fight against God's
order and law V

No sooner, however, did things begin to look
bad with Sickingen than Luther promptly sought
to disengage himself from all complicity or even
sympathy with him and his losing cause. So
early as the iQth of December, 1522, he writes
to his friend Wenzel Link : " Franz von Sick-
ingen has begun war against the Palatine. It
will be a very bad business." (Franeiscus
Sickingen Palatino bellum indixit, res pessima
1 Sdmmtliche Werke, vol. xxviii., 142-201.

THE REVOLT OF THE KNIGHTHOOD. 191

futura est.) His colleague, Melancthon, a few
days later, hastened to deprecate the insinua-
tion that Luther had had any part or lot in
initiating the revolt. " Franz von Sickingen,"
he wrote, " by his great ill-will injures the cause
of Luther ; and notwithstanding that he be en-
tirely dissevered from him, nevertheless when-
ever he undertaketh war he wisheth to seem
to act for the public benefit, and not for his
own. He is even now pursuing a most in-
famous course of plunder on the Rhine." In
another letter he says : " I know how this
tumult grieveth him (Luther),"1 and this re-
specting the man who had shortly before written
of the princes, that their tyranny and haughti-
ness were no longer to be borne, alleging that
God would not longer endure it, and that the
common man even was becoming intelligent
enough to deal with them by force if they did
not mend their manners. A more telling ex-
ample of the "don't-put-him-in-the-horse-pond"
attitude could scarcely be desired. That it was
characteristic of the "great reformer" will be
seen later on when we find him pursuing a similar
policy anent the revolt of the peasants.
1 Corfus Reformatorum, i., 598-599.

192 GERMAN SOCIETY.

After the fall of the Landstuhl all Sickingen's
castles and most of those of his immediate allies
and friends were of course taken, and the greater
part of them destroyed. The knighthood was
now to all intents and purposes politically help-
less and economically at the door of bankruptcy,
owing to the suddenly changed conditions of
which we have spoken in the Introduction and
elsewhere as supervening since the beginning of
the century : the unparalleled rise in prices, con-
currently with the growing extravagance, the
decline of agriculture in many places, and the
increasing burdens put upon the knights by their
feudal superiors, and last, but not least, the in-
creasing obstacles in the way of the successful
pursuit of the profession of highway robbery.
The majority of them, therefore, clung with
relentless severity to the feudal dues of the
peasants, which now constituted their main, and
in many cases their only, source of revenue ; and
hence, abandoning the hope of independence,
they threw in their lot with the authorities, the
princes, lay and ecclesiastic, in the common
object of both, that of reducing the insurgent
peasants to complete subjection.

Some few of the more chivalrous knights, fore-

THE REVOLT OF THE KNIGHTHOOD. 193

most among whom was Florian Geyer, retained
their rebel instincts against the higher authori-
ties, and took sides with the popular movement.
They fought, however, in a forlorn hope.
As we shall now see, provincial centralism, as in
Italy, and not national centralism as in France,
England, and Spain, was destined to be the
political form dominant in Germany far into the
modern period. The disasters and discomfitures
of the Peasants' War, which we shall presently
describe, removed the last obstacle to the com-
plete ascendancy of the provincial potentates,
the princes of the Empire ; for this event was
the immediate cause of the final disintegration
of mediaeval life, and the undermining of the last
survivals of the free institutions of the com-
munal village which had lasted throughout the
Middle Ages.

CHAPTER VII.

COUNTRY AND TOWN AT THE END OF THE
MIDDLE AGES.

FOR the complete understanding of the events
which follow it must be borne in mind that we
are witnessing the end of a distinct historical
period ; and, as we have pointed out in the In-
troduction, the expiring effort, half conscious
and half unconscious, of the people to revert to
the conditions of an earlier age. Nor can the
significance be properly gauged unless a clear
I conception is obtained of the differences between
country and town life at the beginning of the
sixteenth century. From the earliest periods
of the Middle Ages of which we have any his-
torical record, the Markgenossenschaft, or primi-
tive village community of the Germanic race,
was overlaid by a territorial domination, im-
posed upon it either directly by conquest or
voluntarily accepted for the sake of the protec-
tion indispensable in that rude period. The

conflict of these two elements, the mark organ-

(194)

END OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 195

isation and the territorial lordshipT constitutes
the marrow of the social history of the Middle
Ages.

In the earliest times the pressure of the over-
lord, whoever he might be, seems to have been
comparatively slight, but its inevitable tendency
was for the territorial power to extend itself at
the expense of the rural community. It was
thus that in the tenth and eleventh centuries \
the feudal oppression had become thoroughly
settled, and had reached its greatest intensity
all over Europe. It continued thus with little
intermission until the thirteenth century, when
from various causes, economic and otherwise,
matters began to improve in the interests of the
common man, till in the fifteenth^ century_the \
condition of the peasan^jwg^Jjpttprj^h^" «'*• h?^
everbeenj^either before or since within his-
torical times, in Northern and Western Europe.
But with all this, the oppressive power of the
lord of the soil was by no means dead. It was
merely dormant, and was destined to spring
into renewed activity the moment the lord's
necessities supplied a sufficient incentive. From
this_dme_forward the element of territorial
power, supported in its claims by the Roman

196 , GERMAN SOCIETY.

law, with its basis of private property, continued
to eat into it until it had finally devoured the old
rights and possessions of the village community.
The executive power always tended to be trans-
ferred from its legitimate holder, the village in
its corporate capacity, to the lord ; and this
was alone sufficient to place the villager at his
mercy.

At the time of the Reformation, owing to
the new conditions which had arisen and had
brought about in a few decades the hitherto
unparalleled rise in prices, combined with the
unprecedented ostentation and extravagance
more than once referred to in these pages, the
lord was supplied with the requisite incentive
to the exercise of the power which his feudal
system gave him. Consequently, the position of
the peasant rapidly changed for the_worse ; and
although at the outbreak of the movement not
absolutely in extremis, according to our notions,
yet it was so bad comparatively to his previous
condition and that less than half a century be-
fore, and tended so evidently to become more
intolerable, that discontent became everywhere,
rife, and only awaited the torch of the new
doctrines to set it ablaze. The whole course

END OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 197

of the movement shows a peasantry not down-
trodden and starved, but proud and robust,
driven to take up arms not so much by misery
and despair as by the deliberate will to main-
tain the advantages which were rapidly slipping
away from them.

Serfdom was not by any means universal.
Many free peasant villages were to be found
scattered amongst the manors of the territorial
lords, though it was but too evidently the
settled policy of the latter at this time to
sweep everything into their net, and to
compel such peasant communes to accept a
feudal over-lordship. Nor were they at all
scrupulous in the means adopted for attaining
their ends. T^he ecclesiastical foundations, as
before said, were especially expert in forging
documents for the purpose of proving that these
free villages were lapsed feudatories of their
own. Old rights of pasture were being cur-
tailed, and others, notably those of hunting and
fishing,' had in most manors been completely
filched away.

It is noticeable, however, that although the
immediate causes of the peasant rising were the
new burdens which had been laid upon the

198 GERMAN SOCIETY.

common people during the last few years, once
the spirit of discontent was aroused it extended
also in many cases to the traditional feudal dues
to which until then the peasant had submitted
with little murmuring, and an attempt was made
by the country side to reconquer the ancient
complete freedom of which a dim remembrance
had been handed down to them.

The condition of the peasant up to the begin-
ning of the sixteenth century, that is to say, up to
the time when it began to so rapidly change for
the worse, may be gathered from what we are
told by contemporary writers, such as Wimpfel-
ing, Sebastian Brandt, Wittenweiler, the satires
in the Nurnberger Fastnachtspielen, and number-
less other sources, as also from the sumptuary
laws of the end of the fifteenth century. All
these indicate an ease and profuseness of living
which little accord with our notions of the word
peasant. Wimpfeling writes : '' The peasants
in our district and in many parts of Germany
have become, through their riches, stiff-necked
and ease-loving. I know peasants who at the
weddings of their sons or daughters, or the
baptism of their children, make so much display
that a house and field might be bought there-

END OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 199

with, and a small vineyard to boot. Through
their riches, they are oftentimes spendthrift in
food and in vestments, and they drink wines of
price."

A chronicler relates of the Austrian peasants,
under the date of 1478, that "they wore better
garments and drank better wine than their
lords " ; and a sumptuary law passed at the
Reichstag, held at Lindau in 1497, provides
that the common peasant man and the labourer
in the towns or in the field " shall neither make
nor wear cloth that costs more than half a gulden
the ell, neither shall they wear gold, pearls, velvet,
silk, nor embroidered clothes, nor shall they per-
mit their wives or their children to wear such ".

Respecting the food of the peasant, it is stated
that he ate his full in flesh of every kind, in fish,
in bread, in fruit, drinking wine often to excess.
The Swabian, Heinrich Muller, writes in the year
1550, nearly two generations after the change
had begun to take place : "In the memory of my
father, who was a peasant man, the peasant did
eat much better than now. Meat and food in
plenty was there every day, and at fairs and other
junketings the tables did well-nigh break with
what they bore. Then drank they wine as it

200 GERMAN SOCIETY.

were water, then did a man fill his belly and
carry away withal as much as he could ; then
was wealth and plenty. Otherwise is it now.
A costly and a bad time hath arisen since many
a year, and the food and drink of the best pea-
sant is much worse than of yore that of the day
labourer and the serving man."

o

We may well imagine the vivid recollections
which a peasant in the year 1525 had of the
golden days of a few years before. The day
labourers and serving men were equally tan-
talised by the remembrance of high wages and
cheap living at the beginning of the century. A
day labourer could then earn, with his keep, nine,
and without keep, sixteen groschen l a week.
What this would buy may be judged from the
following prices current in Saxony during the
second half of the fifteenth century. A pair of
good working shoes cost three groschen ; a whole
sheep, four groschen ; a good fat hen, half a
groschen ; twenty-five cod fish, four groschen ;
a waggon-load of firewood, together with car-
riage, five groschen ; an ell of the best home-
spun cloth, five groschen ; a scheffel (about a
bushel) of rye, six or seven groschen. The
1 One silver groschen = i|-d.

END OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 201

Duke of Saxony wore grey hats which cost him
four groschen. In Northern Rhineland about
the same time a day labourer could, in addition
to his keep, earn in a week a quarter of rye,
ten pounds of pork, six large cans of milk, and
two bundles of firewood, and in the course of
five weeks be able to buy six ells of linen, a pair
of shoes, and a bag for his tools. In Augsburg
the daily wages of an ordinary labourer repre-
sented the value of six pounds of the best meat,
or one pound of meat, seven eggs, a peck of
peas, about a quart of wine, in addition to such
bread as he required, with enough over for
lodging, clothing, and minor expenses. In
Bavaria he could earn daily eighteen pfennige,
or one and a half groschen, whilst a pound of
sausage cost one pfennig, and a pound of the
best beef two pfennige, and similarly through-
out the whole of the States of Central Europe.
A document of the year 1483, from Ehrbach
in the Swabian Odenwald, describes for us the
treatment of servants by their masters. " All
journeymen," it declares, " that are hired, and
likewise bondsmen (serfs), also the serving men
and maids, shall each day be given twice meat and
what thereto longith, with half a small measure

GERMAN SOCIETY.

of wine, save on fast days, when they shall have
fish or other food that nourisheth. Whoso in
the week hath toiled shall also on Sundays and
feast days make merry after mass and preach-
ing. They shall have bread and meat enough,
and half a great measure of wine. On feast
days also roasted meat enough. Moreover,
they shall be given, to take home with them, a
great loaf of bread and so much of flesh as two
at one meal may eat."

Again, in a bill of fare of the household of
Count Joachim von Oettingen in Bavaria, the
journeymen and villeins are accorded in the
morning, soup and vegetables ; at mid-day,
soup and meat, with vegetables, and a bowl of
broth or a plate of salted or pickled meat ; at
night, soup and meat, carrots, and preserved
meat. Even the women who brought fowls or
eggs from the neighbouring villages to the castle
were given for their trouble — if from the imme-
diate vicinity, a plate of soup with two pieces of
bread ; if from a greater distance, a complete
meal and a cruise of wine. In Saxony, similarly,
the agricultural journeymen received two meals
a day, of four courses each, besides frequently
cheese and bread at other times should they

END OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 203

require it. Not to have eaten meat for a week
was the sign of the direst famine in any district.
Warnings are not wanting against the evils ac-
cruing to the common man from his excessive

o

indulgence in eating and drinking.

Such was the condition of the proletariat in
its first inception, that is, when the mediaeval
system of villeinage had begun to loosen and
to allow a proportion of free labourers to in-
sinuate themselves into its working. How
grievous, then, were the complaints when, while
wages had risen either not at all or at most
from half a groschen to a groschen, the price of
rye rose from six or seven groschen a bushel to
about five-and-twenty groschen, that of a sheep
from four to eighteen groschen, and all other
articles of necessary consumption in a like pro-
portion ! l

In the Middle Ages, necessaries and such
ordinary comforts as were to be had at all were
dirt cheap ; while non-necessaries and luxuries,
that is, such articles as had to be imported from
afar, were for the most part at prohibitive prices.
With the opening up of the world-tnarket during

1 The authorities for the above data are to be found in
Janssen, i., vol. i., bk. iii., especially pp. 330-346.

204 GERMAN SOCIETY.

the first half of the sixteenth century this state
of things rapidly changed. Most luxuries in a
short time fell heavily in price, while necessaries
rose in a still greater proportion.

This latter change in the economic conditions
of the world exercised its most powerful effect,
however, on the character of the mediaeval
town, which had remained substantially un-
changed since its first great expansion at the
end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the
fourteenth centuries. With the extension of
commerce and the opening up of communica-
tions, there began that evolution of the town
whose ultimate outcome was to entirely change
the central idea on which the urban organisa-
tion was based.

The first requisite for a town, according to
modern notions, is facility of communication
with the rest of the world by means of railways,
telegraphs, postal system, and the like. So far
has this gone now that in a new country, for
instance America, the railway, telegraph lines,
etc., are made first, and the towns are then
strung upon them, like beads upon a cord. In
the mediaeval town, on the contrary, communi-
cation was quite a secondary matter, and more

END OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 205

of a luxury than a necessity. Each town was
really a self-sufficing entity, both materially and
intellectually. The modern idea of a town is
that of a mere local aggregate of individuals,
each pursuing a trade or calling with a view to
the world-market at large. Their own locality
or town is no more to them economically than
any other part of the world-market, and very
little more in any other respect. The mediaeval
idea of a town, on the contrary, was that of an
organisation of groups into one organic whole.
Just as the village community was a somewhat
extended family organisation, so was, mutatis
mutandis, the larger unit, the township or city.
Each member of the town organisation owed
allegiance and distinct duties primarily to his
guild, or immediate social group, and through
this to the larger social group which constituted
the civic society. Consequently, every towns-
man felt a kind of esprit de corps with his fellow-
citizens, akin to that, say, which is alleged of
the soldiers of the old French "foreign legion,"
who, being brothers-in-arms, were brothers also
in all other relations. But if every citizen owed
duty and allegiance to the town in its corporate
capacity, the town no less owed protection and

206 GERMAN SOCIETY.

assistance, in every department of life, to its
individual members.

As in ancient Rome in its earlier history, and
as in all other early urban communities, agri-
culture necessarily played a considerable part
in the life of most mediaeval towns. Like the
villages they possessed each its own mark, with
its common fields, pastures, and woods. These
were demarcated by various landmarks, crosses,
holy images, etc. ; and " the bounds " were
beaten every year. The wealthier citizens
usually possessed gardens and orchards within
the town walls, while each inhabitant had his
share in the communal holding without. The
use of this latter was regulated by the Rath or
Council. In fact, the town life of the Middle
Ages was not by any means so sharply differen-
tiated from rural life as is implied in our modern
idea of a town. Even in the larger commercial
towns, such as Frankfurt, Niirnberg or Augs-
burg, it was common to keep cows, pigs, and
sheep, and, as a matter of course, fowls and
geese, in large numbers within the precincts of
the town itself. In Frankfurt in 1481 the pig-
sties in the town had become such a nuisance
that the Rath had to forbid them in the front

END OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 207

of the houses by a formal decree. In Ulm
there was a regulation of the bakers' guild to
the effect that no single member should keep
more than twenty-four pigs, and that cows
should be confined to their stalls at night. In
Niirnberg in 1475 again, the Rath had to
interfere with the intolerable nuisance of pigs
and other farmyard stock running about loose
in the streets. Even in a town like Miinchen
we are informed that agriculture formed one of
the staple occupations of the inhabitants, while
in almost every city the gardeners' or the wine-
growers' guild appears as one of the largest
and most influential.

It is evident that such conditions of life would
be impossible with town-populations even ap-
proaching only distantly those of to-day ; and,
in fact, when we come to inquire into the size
and populousness of mediaeval cities, as into
those of the classical world of antiquity, we are
at first sight staggered by the smallness of their
proportions. The largest and most populous
free imperial cities in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, Ntirnberg and Strassburg, numbered
little more than 20,000 resident inhabitants
within the walls, a population rather less than

2o8 GERMAN SOCJETY.

that of (say) Gloucester at the present time.
Such an important place as Frankfurt-am-Main
is stated at the middle of the fifteenth century
to have had less than 9000 inhabitants. At the
end of the fifteenth century Dresden could only
boast of about 5000. Rothenburg on the
Tauber is to-day a dead city to all intents and
purposes, affording us a magnificent example
of what a mediaeval town was like, as the bulk
of its architecture, including the circuit of its
walls, which remain intact, dates approximately
from the sixteenth century. At present a single
line of railway branching off from the main line
with about two trains a day is amply sufficient
to convey the few antiquarians and artists who
are now its sole visitors, and who have to con-
tent themselves with country-inn accommoda-
tion. Yet this old free city has actually a
larger population at the present day than it had
at the time of which we are writing, when it
was at the height of its prosperity as an
important centre of activity. The figures of
its population are now between 8000 and 9000.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century they
were between 6000 and 7000. A work written
and circulated in manuscript during the first

END OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 209

decade of the sixteenth century, "A Christian
Exhortation " (Ein Christliche Mahnung), after
referring to the frightful pestilences recently
raging as a punishment from God, observes, in
the spirit of true Malthusianism, and as a justifica-
tion of the ways of Providence, that " an there
were not so many that died there were too much
folk in the land, and it were not good that such
should be lest there were not food enough for all".

Great population as constituting importance
in a city is comparatively a modern notion. In
other ages towns became famous on account
of their superior civic organisation, their more
advantageous situation, or the greater acti vity, in-
tellectual, political, or commercial, of theircitizens.

What this civic organisation of mediaeval
towns was, demands a few words of explanation,
since the conflict between the two main elements
in their composition plays an important part in
the events which follow. Something has al-
ready been said on this head in the Introduc-
tion. We have there pointed out that the
Rath or Town Council, that is the supreme
governing body of the municipality, was in all
cases mainly, and often entirely, composed of

the heads of the town aristocracy, the patrician

14

210 GERMAN SOCIETY.

class or " honorability " (Ehrbarkeit\ as they
were termed, who on the ground of their anti-
quity and wealth laid claim to every post of
power and privilege. On the other hand were
the body of the citizens enrolled in the various
guilds, seeking, as their position and wealth
improved, to wrest the control of the town's
resources from the patricians. It must be re-
membered that the towns stood in the position
of feudal over-lords to the peasants who held
land on the city territory, which often extended
for many square miles outside the walls. A
small town like Rothenburg, for instance, which
we have described above, had on its lands as
many as 15,000 peasants. The feudal dues and
contributions of these tenants constituted the
staple revenue of the town, and the management
of them was one of the chief bones of contention.
Nowhere was the guild system brought to a
greater perfection than in the free imperial towns
of Germany. Indeed, it was carried further in
them, in one respect, than in any other part
of Europe, for the guildsof journeymen (Gesellen-
verbdnde], which in other places never attained
any strength or importance, were in Germany
developed to the fullest extent, and of course

END OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 211

supported the craft-guilds in their conflict with
the patriciate. Although there were naturally
numerous frictions between the two classes of
guilds respecting wages, working days, hours,
and the like, it must not be supposed that there
was that irreconcilable hostility between them
which would exist at the present time between
a trades union and a syndicate of employers.
Each recognised the right to existence of the
other. In one case, that of the strike of bakers
towards the close of the fifteenth century, at
Colmar in Elsass, the craft-guilds supported the
journeymen in their protest against a certain
action of the patrician Rath which they con-
sidered to be a derogation from their dignity.

Like the masters the journeymen had their
own guild-house, and their own solemn functions
and social gatherings. There were, indeed,
two kinds of journeymen-guilds : one whose
chief purpose was a religious one, and the other
concerning itself in the first instance with the
secular concerns of the body. However, both
classes of journeymen-guilds worked into one
another's hand. On coming into a strange town
a travelling member of such a guild was certain
of a friendly reception, of maintenance until he

2 1 2 GERMAN SO CIETY.

procured work, and of assistance in finding it as
soon as possible.

Interesting details concerning the wages paid
to journeymen and their contributions to the
guilds are to be found in the original documents
relating exclusively to the journeymen-guilds,
collected by Georg Schanz.1 From these and
other sources it is clear that the position of the
artisan in the towns was in proportion much
better than even that of the peasant at that
time, and therefore immeasurably superior to
anything he has enjoyed since. In South Ger-
many at this period the average price of beef
was about two denarii 2 a pound, while the daily
wages of the masons and carpenters, in addi-
tion to their keep and lodging, amounted in the
summer to about twenty, and in the winter to
about sixteen of these denarii. In Saxony the
same journeymen-craftsmen earned on the aver-
age, besides their maintenance, two groschen
four pfennige a day, or about one-third the
value of a bushel of corn. In addition to this,

1 Zur Geschichte der deutschen Gesellenverbande . Leipz.,
1876.

2C. -yd. The denarius was the South German equiva-
lent of the North German pfennig, of which twelve went to
the groschen.

END OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 213

in some cases the workman had weekly gratui-
ties under the name of "bathing money"; and in
this connection it may be noticed that a holiday
for the purpose of bathing once a fortnight,
once a week, or even oftener, as the case might
be, was stipulated for by the guilds, and gener-
ally recognised as a legitimate demand. The
common notion of the uniform uncleanliness of
the mediaeval man requires to be considerably
modified when one closely investigates the con-
dition of town life, and finds everywhere facili-
ties for bathing in winter and summer alike.
Untidiness and uncleanliness, according to our
notions, there may have been in the streets and
in the dwellings in many cases, owing to inade-
quate provisions for the disposal of refuse and
the like ; but we must not therefore extend this
idea to the person, and imagine that the mediae-
val craftsman or even peasant was as unwhole-
some as, say, the Roumanian peasant of to-day.
When these wages received by the journey-
men artisans are compared with the prices of
commodities previously given, it will be seen
how relatively easy were their circumstances ;
and the extent of their well-being may be further
judged from the wealth of their guilds, which,

2 1 4 GERMAN SO CIETY.

although varying in different places, at all times
formed a considerable proportion of the wealth
of the town. The guild system was based upon
the notion that the individual master and work-
man was working as much in the interest of the
guild as for his own advantage. Each member
of the guild was alike under the obligation to
labour, and to labour in accordance with the
rules laid down by his guild, and at the same
time had the right of equal enjoyment with his
fellow-guildsmen of all advantages pertaining
to the particular branch of industry covered by
the guild. Every guildsman had to work him-
self in propria persona ; no contractor was
tolerated who himself " in ease and sloth doth
live on the sweat of others, and puffeth himself
up in lustful pride ". Were a guild-master ill
and unable to manage the affairs of his work-
shop, it was the council of the guild, and not
himself or his relatives, who installed a repre-
sentative for him and generally looked after his
affairs. It was the guild again which procured
the raw material, and distributed it in relatively
equal proportions amongst its members ; orwhere
this was not the case, the time and place were
indicated at which the guildsman might buy at

END OF THE MFDDLE AGES. 215

a fixed maximum price. Every master had
equal right to the use of the common property
and institutions of the guild, which in some
industries included the essentials of production,
as, for example, in the case of the woollen
manufacturers, where wool kitchens, carding
rooms, bleaching houses and the like were
common to the whole guild.

Needless to say, the relations between master
and apprentices and master and journeymen
were rigidly fixed down to the minutest detail.
The system was thoroughly patriarchal in its
character. In the hey-day of the guilds, every
apprentice and most of the journeymen regarded
their actual condition as a period of preparation
which would end in the glories of mastership.
For this dear hope they were ready on occasion
to undergo cheerfully the most arduous duties.
The education in handicraft, and, we may add,
the supervision of the morals of the blossoming
members of the guild, was a department which
greatly exercised its administration. On the
other hand, the guild in its corporate capacity
was bound to maintain sick or incapacitated
apprentices and journeymen, though after the
journeymen had developed into a distinct

216 GERMAN SOCIETY.

class, and the consequent rise of the journey-
men-guilds, the latter function was probably in
most cases taken over by them. The guild laws
against adulteration, scamped work, and the
like, were sometimes ferocious in their severity.
For example, in some towns the baker who
misconducted himself in the matter of the
composition of his bread was condemned to
be shut up in a basket which was fixed at the
end of a long pole, and let down so many times
to the bottom of a pool of dirty water. In the
year 1456 two grocers, together with a female
assistant, were burnt alive at N urn berg for
adulterating saffron and spices, and a similar
instance happened at Augsburg in 1492. From
what we have said it will be seen that guild life,
like the life of the town as a whole, was essen-
tially a social life. It was a larger family, into
which various blood families were merged. The
interest of each was felt to be the interest of all,
and the interest of all no less the interest of each.
But in many towns, outside the town popula-
tion properly speaking, outside the patrician
families who generally governed the Rath, out-
side the guilds, outside the town organisation
altogether, there were other bodies dwelling

END OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 217

within the walls and forming imperia in ini-
periis. These were the religious corporations,
whose possessions were often extensive, and
who, dwelling within their own walls, shut out
from the rest of the town, were subject only
to their own ordinances. The quasi-religious,
quasi-military Order of the Teutonic Knights
{Deutscher Ordeii], founded at the time of
the Crusades, was the wealthiest and largest
of these corporations. In addition to the
extensive territories which it held in various
parts of the Empire, it had establishments in a
large number of cities. Besides this there were,
of course, the Orders of the Augustinians and
Carthusians, and a number of less important
foundations, who had their cloisters in various
towns. At the beginning of the sixteenth cen-
tury, the pomp, pride, and licentiousness of the
Teutonic Order drew upon it the especial hatred
of the townsfolk ; and amid the general wreck
of religious houses none were more ferociously
despoiled than those belonging to this Order.
There were, moreover, in some towns, the
establishments of princely families, which were
regarded by the citizens with little less hostility
than that accorded to the religious Orders.

218 GERMAN SOCIETY.

Such were the explosive elements of town
life when changing conditions were tending to
dislocate the whole structure of mediaeval exist-
ence. The capture of Constantinople by the
Turks in 1453 had struck a heavy blow at the
commerce of the Bavarian cities which had
come by way of Constantinople and Venice.
This latter city lost one by one its trading
centres in the East, and all Oriental traffic by
way of the Black Sea was practically stopped.
It was the Dutch cities who inherited the wealth
and influence of the German towns when Vasco
da Gama's discovery of the Cape route to the
East began to have its influence on the
trade of the world. This diversion of Oriental
traffic from the old overland route was the
starting point of the modern merchant navy,
and it must be placed amongst the most potent
causes of the break-up of mediaeval civilisation.
The above change, although immediately felt
by the German towns, was not realised by
them in its full importance either as to its
causes or its consequences for more than a cen-
tury; but the decline of their prosperity was
nevertheless sensible, even now, and contributed
directly to the coming upheaval.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE NEW JURISPRUDENCE.

THE impatience of the prince, the prelate,
the noble, and the wealthy burgher at the
restraints which the system of the Middle Ages
placed upon his activity as an individual in the
acquisition for his own behoof and the disposal
at his own pleasure of wealth, regardless of the
consequences to his neighbour, found expres-
sion, and a powerful lever, in the introduction
from Italy of the Roman law in place of the
old canon and customary law of Europe. The
.latter never regarded the individual as an inde-
pendent and autonomous entity, but invariably
treated him with reference to a group or social
body, of which he might be the head or merely
a subordinate member ; but in any case the fila-
ments of custom and religious duty attached
him to a certain humanity outside himself,
whether it were a village community, a guild,
a township, a province, or the Empire. The idea
Qfji right, to -ifldividuaLaiitononiy in his dealings

220 GERMAN SOCIETY.

with men never entered into the mediaeval man's
conception. Hence the mere possession of pro-
perty was not recognised by mediaeval law as
conferring any absolute rights in its holder to
its unregulated use, and the basis of the mediae-
val notions of property was the association of
responsibility and duty with ownership. In
other words, the notion of trust was never
completely divorced from that of possession.

The Roman law rested on a totally different
basis. It represented the legal ethics of a
society on most of its sides brutally and crassly
individualistic. That that society had come
to an end instead of evolving to its natural
conclusion — a developed capitalistic indivi-
dualism such as exists to-day — was due to the
weakness of its economic basis, owing to the
limitation at that time of man's power over
nature, which deprived it of recuperative and
defensive power, thereby leaving it a prey not
only to internal influences of decay but also to
violent destructive forces from without. Never-
theless, it left a legacy of a ready-made legal
system to serve as an implement for the first
occasion when economic conditions should be
once more ready for progress to resume the

THE NEW JURISPRUDENCE.

course of individualistic development, abruptly
brought to an end by the fall of ancient civilisa-
tion as crystallised in the Roman Empire,
v/ The popular courts of the village, of the mark
and of the town, which had existed up to the
beginning of the sixteenth century with all their
ancient functions, were extremely democratic in
character. Cases were decided on their merits,
in accordance with local custom, by a body of
jurymen chosen from among the freemen of the
district, to whom the presiding functionaries,
most of whom were also of popular selection,
were little more than assessors. The technica-
lities of a cut-and-dried system were unknown.
The Catholic Germanic theory of the Middle
Ages proper, as regards the civil power in all
its functions, from the highest downward, was
that of the mere administrator of justice as such ;
whereas the Roman law regarded the magistrate
as the vicegerent of the princeps or imperator,
in whose person was absolutely vested as its su-
preme embodiment the whole power of the State.
The Divinity of the Emperors was a recognition
of this fact ; and the influence of the Roman law
revived the theory as far as possible under the
changed conditions, in the form of the doctrine

2 2 2 GERMAN SOCIE TY.

of the Divine Right of Kings — a doctrine which
was totally alien to the Catholic feudal concep-
tion of the Middle Ages. This doctrine, more-
over, received added force from the Oriental
conception of the position of the ruler found in
the Old Testament, from which Protestantism
drew so much of its inspiration.

But apart from this aspect of the question,
the new juridical conception involved that of a
system of rules as the crystallised embodiment
of the abstract "State," given through its repre-
sentatives which could under no circumstances
be departed from,~~arid~which could only be
modified in thejr operation by legal quibbles
that left to them their nominal integrity. The
new law could therefore only be administered f
by a class of men trained specially for the <
purpose, of which the plastic customary law
borne down the stream of history from primi-
tive times, and insensibly adapting itself to
new conditions but understood in its broader
aspects by all those who might be called to
administer it, had little need. The Roman law,
the study of which was started at Jfologna in
the J:welfth century, as might naturally be
expected, early attracted the attention of the

THE NEW JURISPRUDENCE. 223

German Emperors as a suitable instrument for
use on emergencies. But it made little real head-
way in Germany itself as against the early in-
stitutions until the fifteenth century, when the
provincial power of the princes of the Empire
was beginning to overshadow the central autho-
rity of the titular chief of the Holy Roman
Empire. The former, while strenuously resist-
ing the results of its application from above,
found in it a powerful auxiliary in their courts
in riveting their power over the estates subject
to them. As opposed to the delicately adjusted
hierarchical notions of Feudalism, which did not
recognise any absoluteness of dominion either
over persons or things, in short for which neither

( the head of the State had any inviolate authority!

Jas such, nor private property any inviolable/
rights or sanctity as such, the new jurisprudence
made corner-stones of both these conceptions.

Even the canon law, consisting in a mass
of Papal decretals dating from the early Middle
Ages, and which, while undoubtedly containing
considerable traces of the influence of Roman
law, was nevertheless largely customary in its
character with an infusion of Christian ethics, had
to yield to the new jurisprudence, and that too in

224 GERMAN SOCIETY.

countries where the Reformation had been un-
able to replace the old ecclesiastical dogma and
organisation. The principles and practice of

to r r C^TJVL^Hf

the Roman law were sedulously inculcated _by
the tribe of civilian lawyers who by the be-
ginning of the sixteenth century infested every

^VBB^

Court throughout Europe. Every potentate,
great and small, little as he might like its
application by his feudal over-lord to himself,
was yet only too ready and willing to invoke
its aid for the oppression of his own vassals or
peasants. Thus the civil law everywhere
triumphed. It became the juridical expression
of the political, economical, and religious change
which marks the close of the Middle Ages and
the beginnings of the modern commercial world.
It must not be supposed, however, that no
resistance was made to it. Everywhere in con-
temporary literature, side by side with denun-
ciations of the new mercenary troops, the
Landsknechte, we find uncomplimentary allu-
sions to the race of advocates, notaries, and
procurators who, as one writer has it, " are in-
creasing like grasshoppers in town and in coun-
try year by year ". Wherever they appeared,
we are told, countless litigious disputes sprang

THE NEW JURISPRUDENCE. 225

up. He who had but the money in hand might
readily defraud his poorer neighbour in the
name of law and right. " Woe is me ! " ex-
claims one author, " in my home there is but
one procurator, and yet is the whole country-
round about brought into confusion by his
wiles. What a misery will this horde bring
upon us ! " Everywhere was complaint and in
many places resistance.

(As early as 1460 we find the Bavarian estates
vigorously complaining that all the courts were
in the hands of doctorsT) They demanded that
the rights of the land and the ancient custom
should not be cast aside ; but that the courts
as of old should be served by reasonable and
honest judges, who should be men of the same
feudal livery and of the same country as those
whom they tried. Again in 1514, when the
evil had become still more crying, we find the
estates of Wiirtemberg petitioning Duke Ulrich
that the Supreme Court "shall be composed of
honourable, worthy, and understanding men of
the nobles and of the towns, who shall not
be doctors, to the intent that the ancient usages
and customs should abide, and that it should

be_ judged according tp_them jn such wise

15

226 GERMAN SOCIETY.

that the poor man might no longer be brought
to confusion ". [In many covenants of the
end of the fifteenth century, express stipu-
lation is made that they should not be inter-
preted by a doctor or licentiate, and also in
some cases that no such doctor or licentiate
should be permitted to reside or to exercise his

profession within certain districts. Great as

^j

was the economical influence of the new jurists
in the tribunals, their political influence in the
various courts of the Empire, from the Reichs-
kammergericht downwards, was, if anything,
greater. Says Wimpfeling, the first writer on
the art of education in the modern world :
" According to the loathsome doctrines of the
new jurisconsults, the prince shall be everything
in the land and the people naught. The people
shall only obey, pay tax, and do service. More-
over, they shall not alone obey the prince but
also those he has placed in authority, who begin
to puff themselves up as the proper lords of the
land, an J to order matters so that the princes
themselves do as little as may be reign." From
this passage it will be seen that the modern
V- bureaucratic state, in which government is as
nearly as possible reduced to mechanism and

THE NEW JURISPRUDENCE. 227

the personal relation abolished, was ushered in
under the auspices of the civil law. How easy
it was for the civilian to effect the abolition of
feudal institutions may be readily imagined by
those cognisant of the principles of Roman law.
For example, the Roman law of course making no
mention of the right of the mediaeval "estates" to
be consulted in the levying of taxes or in other
questions, the jurist would explain this right to
his too willing master, the prince, as an abuse
which had no legal justification, and which, the
sooner it were abolished in the interest of good
government the better it would be. All feudal
rights as against the power of an over-lord were
explained away by the civil jurist, either as per-
nicious abuses, or, at best, as favours granted
in the past by the predecessors of the reigning
monarch, which it was within his right to trun-
cate or to abrogate at his will.

From the preceding survey will be clearly
perceived the important role which the new
jurisprudence played on the continent of Europe
in the gestation of the new phase which history
was entering upon in the sixteenth century.
Even the short sketch given will be sufficient
to show that it was not in one department only

228 GERMAN SOCIETY.

that it operated ; but that, in addition to its own
domain of law proper, its influence was felt in
modifying economical, political, and indirectly
even ethical and religious conditions. From
this time forth Feudalism slowly but surely
gave place to the newer order, all that remained
being certain of its features, which, crystallised
into bureaucratic forms, were doubly veneered with
a last trace of mediaeval ideas and a denser
coating of civilian conceptions. This transi-
tional Europe, and not mediaeval Europe, was
the Europe which lasted on until the eighteenth
century, and which practically came to an end
with the French Revolution.

APPENDICES.

APPENDIX A.

THE following is a rescript issued by a Commission
of the Reichstag held at Niirnberg in 1522-23, anent
the commercial syndicates which the sudden develop-
ment of the world-market had recently called into
existence : —

" What the small Commission by order of the
great Commission hath determined concerning the
Monopolia or pernicious and prohibited commerce
is hereafter related."

(MSS. of 6 1 pages in the Ernestine General Archives
at Weimar, Margin E. Quoted by Egelhaaf. Appen-
dix, vol. i.)

"In the first place, concerning the origin of the word
Monopolia. Monopolia is a Greek word, from the
word Monos, that is, alone, and Polonia, that is, a
selling. As if one should say : I alone sell this or
that, or my Company or I alone sell. Therefore, such
separate dealing whereby several dealers or traders
unite together in such wise that they alone obtain
profit from their handicraft or merchandy is called
Monopolia. This is discoursed of in Lege Unica (?),
Cod. de Monopoliis.

" Item, the aforesaid Monopolia, Uniting, Combin-
ing, Associatings and their Sellings have not now for
the first time been found not to be borne ; but the

232 GERMAN SOCIETY.

same were regarded and known as very noxious to
the Commonweal, destructive and worthy to be
punished, as aforetime by the Roman Emperors and
Jurisconsults, and more especially by the blessed
Emperor Justinian, so that such trespassers should
be made to lose all their goods, and moreover should
be adjudged to eternal misery (exile) from their own
homes, as standeth written Lege Unica, Cod. de Monop.
Honorius also and Theodosius forbade those of noble
birth and those of the richer sort from harmful com-
merce ; so that the common folk might the more easily
buy of the Merchants ; and in the Reichstag at Koln
in 1512 the matter was much debated by the Em-
peror Maximilian, the Electors, the Princes and the
Estates, and the aforesaid increase in the price of
Wares was forbidden under great pains and penalties.
The decree of the Reichstag sayeth : —

" And since much great fellowship in Trade hath
arisen within the Realm in the last years, and also
there be several and sundry persons who venture to
bring all kinds of Wares and Merchants' goods, such
as Spices, Arras, Woollen Cloth, and such-like into
their own hand with power to trade in them, to set
or to make their own advantage out of them, as it
them pleaseth, and do greatly harm thereby the
Holy Empire and all Estates thereof, contrary to the
Imperial written Law and to all honesty : we have
ordered and enacted for the furthering of the common
profit and according to necessity, and we do desire
that earnestly, and we will, that such noxious dealing
be henceforth forbidden, and that they abstain [from

APPENDIX A. 233

it], and that henceforth they may [not] carry it
on or exercise it. Those who shall do this con-
trary to the aforesaid, their Goods and Chattels shall
be confiscated and fall to the Authority of the place.
And the same Companies and Merchants [shall]
henceforth not be conducted [on their journeys] by
any authority in the Empire, nor shall it be lawful
for such to do so with whatsoever words, opinion
or clauses the convoy hath been given. Yet shall
it not be forbidden to any man on this account to
enter into company with any other save only if he
undertake to bring the Wares into one hand and to
place upon the Wares a worth according to his own
mind and pleasure ; or shall pledge the buyer or
seller to sell, to give, or to keep such Wares to or for
no man but himself, or that he shall not give them
save such wise as he hath agreed with him. But
when they, to whom it is permitted to pursue such
trade, shall seek to make an unbecoming dearness,
the Authority shall with zeal and earnestness forbid
such dearness, and command an honest sale ; but
where an Authority be careless, the Fiscal shall
exhort the same to perform his duty within the
space of one month, failing such hath the Fiscal
power to enter process against him.

" But the Authority and the Fiscal have neither
done their duty, as is not right nor just, forasmuch
as in the present times other small robbers and thieves
are punished sorely, and these rich Companies, even
one of them, do in the year compass much more un-
doing to the Commonweal than all other robbers and

234 GERMAN SOCIETY.

thieves in that they and their servants give public
display of luxuriousness, pomp and prodigal wealth,
of which there is no small proof in that Bartholomew
Rhem did win, in so short a time and with so little
stock of trade, such notable riches in the Hochstetter
Company — as hath openly appeared in the justifying
before the City Court at Augsburg and at the Reich-
stag but lately held at Worms. Therefore hath the
said Rhem been made prisoner in Worms, and is even
still kept in durance. Moreover shall he be sent here
to Niirnberg that he may bear witness, and that it ma)'
be known with what perils the aforesaid forbidden
Monopolies and Trade be practised, also through what
good ways and means such may be set aside and
prevented.

" There are three questions to be discoursed of : ( I )
Whether the Monopolies be hurtful to the Holy
Empire and therefore are to be destroyed ; (2) Whether
all Companies without difference shall be done away,
or whether a measure shall be set to them ; (3) By
what means this shall be done, and how these things
may be remedied.

" I. Firstly, that the great Companies and the
heaping up of their Stocks are everywhere harmful
is the one cause as may be seen from the Spice, which
is the most considerable Merchandise thus dealt and
traded with, in the German nation. It is said with
credibility that the King of Portugal hath not to pay
more for one pound's weight of Pepper sent from the
Indies to Antwerp than three shillings in gold, twenty
of which shillings go to a Rhenish Gulden. But also

APPENDIX A. 235

if a Company in Portugal doth send for Spices it hath
no trouble and excuse. How dear soever the King
doth offer or give the Wares, it payeth him sometimes
yet more, but on condition that he shall not furnish
such Wares to them who will hereafter buy, save for a
still greater price. To this example it may be added
that he who hath offered an hundred-weight of Pepper
from Portugal for eighteen ducats hath received for
them twenty ducats or even more, with the condition
that the Royal Majesty shall furnish to none other for
the space of one or two years the same Pepper or
Wares cheaper than twenty-four ducats, and thereby
one hath so outbidden the other that the Spice which
at the first could be sold but for eighteen ducats is
now sold in Portugal for thirty-four ducats and up-
wards. And it hath become at one time well-nigh as
dear as it was ever before. The same hath also hap-
pened to other Spices with which such Merchants are
nothing burdened, nor do they have any loss there-
withal, but great over-abounding gain, the while they,
for their part, will sell as dearly as they may, and none
else in the Holy Empire may have or obtain the same.
What loss and disadvantage resulteth to most men,
even to the least, is not hard to be comprehended.
We may prove this from the Nurnberg Spice convoys.
The Saffron of most price, so called from theCatalonian
place Saffra, hath cost some years ago, as namely in
the sixteenth year, two and a half Gulden, six
Kreutzers ; now in the twenty-second year it costeth
five and a half Gulden, fifteen Kreutzers. The best
Saffron, which is called Zymer by the Merchants, hath

236 GERMAN SOCIETY.

cost from 1516 to 1519 two Gulden the pound, and
even in 1521 two Gulden, twenty-four to twenty-six
Kreutzers ; now it costeth four Gulden ; and even
so are all Saffrons more dear, Arragonian, Polish,
Avernian, etcetera.

"The Merchants, moreover, do not make dear
everything at the same time, but now with Saffron
and Cloves, the one year with Pepper and Ginger,
then with Nutmeg, etcetera, to the intent that their
advantage may not at once be seen of men. It is
therefore purposed to make an enquiry of how much
Spices are brought into Germany each year, so that
it may be known how much the tax upon these Spices
would bring in, in so far as the Merchants make a
small increase to each pound, as happeneth very
commonly. It hath been ordered to the Merchants
to make estimation thereof, but their estimations were
diverse ; yet are the numbers told for the Spices
which each year go in from Lisabon [Lisbon] alone,
so that there may be had better knowledge. 36,000
hundred-weight of Pepper and not less but rather the
more ; 2400 hundred-weight of Ginger, about 1000
balls of Saffron do come from Lisabon alone, without
that which cometh from Venice. For the other Spices
they do not make known the sum. At Antwerp this
may be known the more surely, through the due
which is there levied.

" The Companies have paid especial note to such
Wares as can be the least spared ; and if one be not
rich enough, it goeth for help to another, and the
twain together do bring the Wares, whatsoever they

APPENDIX A. 237

be, wholly into their own hand. If a poor, small
Merchant buy of them these same Wares, whose worth
hath been cunningly enhanced, and if he desireth to
trade with these Wares, according to his needs, then
these aforesaid great hucksters are from that hour
upon his neck, they have the abundance of these same
Wares, and can give them cheaper and on longer
borrowing ; thereby is this poor man oppressed,
cometh to harm and some to destruction. Ofttimes
do they buy back their Wares through unknown
persons, but not to the gain of them that sell ; there-
fore it is that they have their Storehouses in well-
nigh all places in Europe ; and here lieth the cause
of the magnificence of the heaping up of Stock.

" The great Companies do lessen trading and con-
suming in the lands. They do all their business in
far countries and by letters ; where now there is a
great Company, there aforetime did twenty or more
[persons], it may be, nourish themselves, who must all
now wander afar, because they cannot hold a store-
house and servants in other places. By these means
came it to pass that roads, tolls and convoy dues were
multiplied, as innkeepers and all handiworkers of use
and pleasure have knowledge ; for many sellers bring
good sale and cheapness into the Wares.

" Furthermore, the good gold and silver Monies
are brought out of the land by the Companies, who
everywhere do buy them up and change them.
Within a short time Rhenish gold will have been
changed and melted from far-seeking lust of gain.
Therefore are there already in divers towns risings of

238 GERMAN SO CIE T Y.

the poor man, which, where it be not prevented, will,
it is to be feared, extend further and more.

"II. Now it be asked, are all Companies to be there-
fore destroyed? We have now already shown cause
why the great Companies mighty in money should be
scattered and not be borne with. But, therefore, it
is not said that all Companies and common trading
should be wholly cut away ; this were indeed against
the Commonweal and very burdensome, harmful and
foolish to the whole German nation ; for therefrom
would follow (i) that one should give strength, help
and fellowship to Frenchmen and foreign nations,
that they should undertake and carry out that which
with so much pains we have gone forth to destroy.
These foreign nations would then suck out the whole
German land. (2) Furthermore, if each would trade
singly and should lose thereby, that would then be to
his undoing, and also to theirs who had entrusted to
him their Goods. That may not happen where divers
persons join together with moderation. (3) Such a
forbidding would solely serve the rich to their ad-
vantage, who in all cases everywhere do pluck the
grain for themselves and do leave the chaff for others.
Of these rich, some are so placed that they are able
even to do that which now great Companies do
and which is thought to be so sore an oppression.
Therewith would the matter not be bettered, but only
a covering would be set upon it. (4) Trading and
industry do bring this with them, that the Wares should
not be sought in one place alone. One man is not
able, and more especially not at the time when there

APPENDIX A. 239

is need thereof. The issue would be that trade in
the land would be forbidden and it would serve the
gain of foreign nations, and especially at this time
[hurt ?] the Germans ; but to hire servants and to send
such in his stead to another place needs money, and
small Stocks will hardly bear the holding of domestics;
many there be, indeed, who are not able to provide
for themselves, let alone for servants.

"III. What proposals are now to be put forth for
the staying of the aforesaid forbidden practice ?

" (i) Companies or single persons shall use no more
than twenty thousand, forty thousand, or for the most
fifty thousand Gulden Stock for trade, and shall have
no more than three Storehouses outside their family
dwelling.

"(2) They shall be held by their bodily sworn
vows to declare to their Authority that they have no
more money in trade.

" (3) Their Stock may not be enhanced by gain ;
but rather, at farthest, account must be made every
two years and the gain divided, also a notifying to
the Authority must be made that the reckoning and
the distributing hath been fulfilled.

" (4) No Money may be lent with usury for purpose
of trade, for this is ungodly and usurious, also harmful
and noxious to the Commonweal, without weighing
of gain and of loss to take or to give monies or usury.

"(5) No sort of Ware may be brought into one
hand.

" (6) Dispersed Companies may not join themselves
together, on pain of losing all their goods.

24o GERMAN SOCIETY,

" (7) No Merchant may buy at one buying more
than TOO hundred-weight of Pepper, 100 hundred-
weight of Ginger, and of no manner of Spice which
hath the name, more than 50 hundred-weight ; also
after such buying he may not buy or trade any more
of the same Ware for the fourth part of a year.

"(8) Inasmuch as especial nimbleness is used by
the great Companies, the which have their knowledge
in many lands, when the Wares spoil or when they
come into greater worth, so as they make foreign
Merchants buy up from others that have such Wares
and bring the same into their hands before the others
do know of such loss. Therefrom there followeth a
great dearness of the Ware. For the other part the
punishment may be best set in such wise that should
such a harmful sale be disclosed within four weeks
from the making thereof, the buyer shall be bound
thereunto that he surrender his Ware again to the
seller for the one half that was paid therefor ; the
other half part of the price falleth to the Authority.

" (9) On pain of loss of the Goods, as hath been
determined in Koln, the seller may not make con-
dition that the buyer shall not dare to give away the
Wares for a lesser price.

"(10) In order that foreign nations may not be
healed and bettered the while German land is
oppressed and despoiled, it is commanded that this
ordinance shall bind all foreigners born without who
have their Storehouse within the Empire ; so that a
foreigner, whether a Frenchman or whatsoever he
may be, that tradeth in the Holy Empire and is

APPENDIX A. 241

encompassed by this ordinance, shall and must suffer
all penalties even as other Merchants born in this
country, that do transgress. This shall also bind
all Principalities, Lordships and Cities, even though
they be free, to the intent that it shall be held equally
for all men, and that none shall therein be spared.
"(11) Through the voyaging of German Mer-
chants to Portugal there ariseth great evil, in that in
Lisabon, because of the shipping from Portugal to
the Indies with Spices and other matters, there be
great Storehouses and very bold buying and sell-
ing, such as can in no wise else exist in one place,
and therefore in that place ariseth the great due and
enhancement of every manner of Spice and Ware
which are borne away from thence, the same also
with .the pennyworths which they use up even in
Portugal, and may not succeed with till they be once
more shipped from the Indies to that city. To this
end must every Ware that cometh from Portugal be
ventured on the sea by Germans and be bound upon
the Wheel of Fortune ; and the voyage to Portugal is
well-nigh more fearsome and dangerous than is that
to the Indies. In few years on this same sea hath
the worth of fifteen hundreds of thousands of Gulden
been drowned and perished ; and yet nevertheless are
the Merchant folk, who have inherited but little,
become so unspeakably rich. Therefore shall all
shipping to Portugal be forbidden ; the Portuguese
shall themselves take in hand the venture and their
Wares, and those that they may not keep they shall
bring to Germany ; for if one doth not thus pursue

16

242 GERMAN SOCIETY.

them, they must perforce sell at a lesser price.
Others do affirm, indeed, that if the Portuguese do
bring their Wares to Antorff (Antwerp), then would
the great Companies find there also means to buy
up the Wares ; and the King of Portugal may be
moved to get the Ware to Danzig or Egen Merten
(Aigues Mortes) in France, so that the Germans
must fetch them thence. But others would show,
forsooth, that because of his receiving of the metals
he cannot spare Germany, and without them he can
do no trade to the Indies ; one must therefore but
hinder his receiving of the metals, and thus shall one
compel him not to trade to France.

" (12) There shall be a fixing of the price of some
Wares, to the end that not merely is it ordered for the
common hucksters and Merchant folk, but also for
them that buy these Wares for their own use and
pleasure. It is to fear that also the scattered Com-
panies do agree together secretly to sell over the
price ; moreover, hath the King of Portugal the Spices
in his power alone, and since that time can he set the
prices as he will, because for no manner of dearness
will they rest unsold among the Germans. Moreover,
it hath been related from Refel and Lubeck that the
King of Denmark and the Fuggers stand in trade, the
one with the other, that all Merchants' goods that have
hitherto come from Muscey (Moscow) into the German
trading cities shall further come to Denmark, and into
the might of the King thereof and of the Fuggers, to
the end that they may enhance the same at their
pleasure. Thus far have men not punished such

APPENDIX A. 243

things with just pains, but have wittingly borne with
them. Such can alone be made riddance of by a
forbidding, that they and the Wares may not be sold
in Germany higher than for a price determined. The
Regiment (Imperial Governing Body) shall tax each
Ware by the hundred-weight to a fixed sum. As
measure shall the customary middle prices serve as
they have been wont to be before the Wares have
come into the power of the King of Portugal and of
the great, hurtful, forbidden Companies. But question
may be made : what though the Wares should mis-
carry ? Then shall the Merchant folk recover them-
selves in them that do succeed. But what if there be
lack of those Wares ? The foreigners can far less
spare our money than we their Wares ; therefore is
there in the Empire no long enduring, hurtful lack to
be feared ; unless it should be that one should esteem the
not giving out in vain of Money for a lack. By such
ordinance shall the danger of the overweening raising
of prices' be best hindered. In the matter of the dues
the remoteness of the places can be made consideration
of, also the diversness of the measures and the
weights ; thus will the Pepper in the storehouse in
Frankfort be taxed at one Kreutzer the pound and
even so in N Urn berg. The due shall begin one half-
year after the determination thereof by the Imperial
Estates.

" Further, it shall not be that the Merchants shall
lend money to the poor folk upon pledge of the seed
that standeth in the field, or upon the grapes of the
vine-stems and other fruits, whereby these poor,

244 GERMAN SOCIETY.

needy people have that taken from them that they do
hardly earn.

" Thereupon shall follow penalties for all trans-
gressors as for careless Authorities ; the leave that
each may indite before the Fiscal ; the determination
that all confiscated goods wherewith transgressions
have been committed shall fall, the half to the Imperial
Fiscus, the half to the [local] Authority. The Fiscal
shall also proceed against the Companies which have
enriched themselves openly against right and justice ;
if this do befal, it shall not alone feed the Fiscus but
shall also warn others to guard themselves from such
evil hurtfulness. The ordinance concerning the sale,
etc., shall be put in work two months after it hath been
proclaimed.

" It be also considered that the safe conduct of the
highways is beneficial to the Merchants' calling, so
that all traders may traffic and travel more safely on
the highways of the Holy Empire than hath befallen
for long time past.

' It chanceth that certain Merchants deceitfully in
the seeming of trust and faith do take the Goods of
other men by making bankruptcy, which is like unto a
theft, and he who doth of purpose strive after another
man's Money and Goods shall be punished hardly.

" In fine, there be Imperial Measures and Weights
needed ; for the falsifying of Cloths and Wares it
behoveth a grievous treatment, and the Estates are
warned to beware of cunning and greedy and suborned
procurations, whereby this ordinance may be brought
to nought by the Companies." (N.B. — Hereby is

APPENDIX A. 245

meant according to a notice from another hand : "by
a bribing of the Authorities so that by their favor
and patrocinium the pains of this ordinance may be
escaped ".)

I have given the above document at length, as it
is curious and instructive, for more than one reason.
In the first place, it indicates the Imperial German
centralisation in several ways attempted during the
reigns of Maximilian and Charles V., on the lines of
the recent centralising administrations of England,
France and Spain. It also shows us Germany com-
manding the bullion of Europe to a great extent.
This was, of course, in consequence of the wealth of
the trading cities, especially of the Hanse and Bavarian
towns. The importance of the spice trade is also
strikingly illustrated ; and on this point the document
may well give rise to various reflections as to the
character of late mediaeval cookery. Last, but not
least, we see the hostility of the proud feudal prince
or baron and his legal assessor to the Parvenu and
Nouveau riche then for the first time appearing on the
scene.

I. (IM AUSZUG}.

1522. Was der Kleine Ausschus aus Befehl des
grossen Ausschusses, der Monopolia oder schadlichen
verbotenen Verkauf halb geratschlagt hat, wtrd nachher
erscihlt.

(Handschrift von 61 Seiten im Ernestinischen
Gesaint Archiv zu Weimar. Registrande E.}

246 GERMAN SOCIETY.

Erstlich von dem Ur sprung des Wortes Monopolia.
Monopolia ist ein kriegerisch Wort, welches seinen
Ursprung hat von dem Worte Monos, das ist a II ein,
und Polonie, das ist Verkauf. Gleich als sprdche
jemand : ich allein verkanf das oder jenes, Oder; meine
Gesellschaft oder ich allein verkaufe. Darum wird
solche sonderliche Hantierung, als ob sick etliche
Hantierer oder Kaufleute demnassen vereinigen, dass
sie alien den Nutzen aus ihrem Handwerk oder Kauf-
niannschaft empfangen, Monopolia genannt. Davon
ist gesagt in lege Vinca (?) Cod. de Monopoliis.

Item obengemeldete Monopolia, Vereinigung, Ver-
bindung, Gesellschaften und ihr Verkauf wird nicht
allein allererst jetzt dem gemeinen Nutzen unleidlick
und unertrdglich erfunden, sondern sind dieselben wie
vor durch den romischen Kaiser und Rechtsetzer und
sonderlich durch den loblichen Kaiser Justinio, dem
gemeinen Nutzen als fast schddlich, verderblich und
straflich geacht und erkannt, dass dieselben Uberfuhrer
[ Ubertreter\ alle Hire Giiter verloren und dazu ausser-
halb ihrer Wohnung in eiviges Elend ( Verbannung]
verurteilt sein sollen, als geschrieben steht lege Vinca
Cod. de Mono. Auch Honorius und Theodosius Jiaben
denen vom Adel und den Reicheren die schddliche Kauf-
mannschaft verboten, damit das gemeine Volk leichter
bei den Kaufleuten kaufen kb'nne, und auf dem Reich-
stag zu Kb'ln ist 1512 die Sache von Kaiser Maxi-
milian, Kurfiirsten, Fiirsten und Stdnden hock bewegt
und gemeldete Verteurung der Waren bei grossen
Peenen und Strafen verboten worden. Der Abschied
dieses Reichstags sagt : —

APPENDIX A. 247

Und nachdem etwa viel grosse Gesellschaft in
Kaufmannschaft in kurzen Jahren ini Reich aufges-
tanden, auch etliche sondere Personen seien, die allerlei

War en und Kaufmannsguter wie Spezerei, Artz,
wollene Tucker und dergleichen in ihre Hand und Gewalt
zu bringen unterstehn, Verkauf damit zu treiben, setzen
und machen ihnen zu Vorteil gewertet ihres Gefallens,
fiigen damit dem heiligen Reiche und alien Standen
desselben merklichen Schaden zu, wider gemein ge-
schriebenes kaiserliche Recht und aller Ehrbarkeit :
haben wir zu Forderung gemeimen Nutzens und der
Notdurft nach georduct und gesetzt, und tun das
hiermit ernstlich, und wollen dass solche schddliche
Handierung hinfilro verboten und abstehn und die
hinfilro treiben oder tiben. Welche herwider solches
tun wurden \werden\ der \deren\ Habe und Giiter soil
confisciert und der Oberkeit jiglichs Orts verf alien sein.

Und dieselben Gesellschaften und Kaufleute hinfiiro
durch keine Obrigkeit im Reich geleitet werden,
sie aucJi desselben nicht fdhig sein, mit was Worten,
Meinung oder Clauseln solch Geleit gegeben wurden.
Dock soil hiedurch niemand verboten sein sick mit
jemand in Gesellschaft zu tun, urn Waren die ihm
gef alien zu kaufen und zu verhandieren, dann allein,
dass er die Ware nicht unterstehe in eine Hand zu
bringen und derselben Ware einen Wert nach seinem

Willen und Gefallen zu setzen, oder dem Kaufer oder

Verkauf er andingen, solche Ware niemandem denn
ihm zu kaufen, zu geben oder zu behalten, oder dass er
sie nicht mehr geben will, wie er mit ihm iiberein
gekommen set (wa wie er mit ihme iiberkomen hetle).

248 GERMAN SOCIETY.

Wenn aber die, welchen so Kaufmannschaft zu treiben
erlaubt ist, unziemliche Teurung zu machen sich unter-
stehn, so soil die Oberkeit mit Fleiss und Ernst, solche

Teuerung abschaffen und redlichen Kauf verfiigen.

Wo aber eine Oberkeit lassig ware, soil der Fiscal sie
mahnen in Monatsfrist das Ihre zu 'tun ; andernfalls
hat er Macht gegen sie zu procedieren.

A lie in die Oberkeit und der Fiscal haben das Ihre
nicht getan, das denn ^veder gut nock Recht ist,
dieweil dock je zu Zeiten andere kleine Rauber und
Diebe hart (als hertiglich} gestraft werden, und diese
reichen Gesellschaften eine des Jahrs den gemeinen
Nutzen viel mehr weder [als] alle andere Straufrauber
und Diebe beschddigen, wie dann das ihr und Hirer
Diener Kostlichkeit, Pracht und iiberschwenglicher
Reichtum b'ffentliche Anzeigung gibt. Derselben nicht
kleine Anzeigung hat man auch daraus, dass Bart-
holome Rhem gar in kurzer Zeit mit so wenigem
Hauptgut in der Hochsteter Gesellschaft als ein-
merklich Gut gewonnen kat, wie dann das in der
Rechftertigungam Stadtgericht zu Augsburg und auf
jilngst gehaltenem Reichstag zu Worms offenbar ge-
macht ist. Man hat den Rhem deshalb in Worms
gefdnglicli eingebracht, da er denn noch jetzt gefanglicJi
enthalten wird. Man soil iJin hieher nach Niirnberg
erfordern, damit er Zeugnis ablegt und man erfahrt,
mit waserlei Gefahrlidikeit obengemeldete verbotene
Monopolien und Verkauf geilbt werden, auc/t durcJi
welche guten Mitteln Wege solchem zurorzukommen
und abzuwenden ist.

Drei Fragen sind hternber zu stellen. (i) Ob die

APPENDIX A. 249

Monopolien dem Jieiligen Reiche schddlich und deshalb
abzuthun sind. (2) Ob alle Gesellschaften ohne Unter-
schied abgetJian werden sollen oder ob ihnen ein Mass
zu set sen set. (3) Durch was fur Mittel dieses
geschehen und wie diesen Sachen geholfen vverden
kann.

I. Erstlich dass die grossen Gesellschaften und
Haufung Hirer Hauptgiiter mdnniglicli nachteilig sind,
ist die eine Ursdche und will es an der Spezerei,
welches der vornehhmste Stiicke eines ist, so in deutscher
Nation verfiihrt und hantiert werden, ansehen. Man
sagt glaublicJi, dass der \dern ?] Kbnig von Portugal
i Pfund Pfeffer aus Indien bis nach Ant^verpen zu
liefern, fiber drei Schilling in Gold, deren zwanzig
ein Rheinischer Gulden tut, nicJit zu stehen komme. So
aber eine Gesellschaft in Portugal nach Spezerei
schickt, so habe sie keine Beschwerde und Einrede,
ivie tener der Kbnig solche Waare bent oder gibt,
bezahle ihm sogar zu Zeiten nock mehr, nur mit dent
Ceding, dass er solche Ware andern, die hernach
kaufen wollen, nock teurer gebe. Des zu einem
Exempel mag gesetzt werden: so der von Portu-
gal einen Centner Pfefferum 18 Dukaten etwageboten
hat, haben sie ihm 20 oder nock mehr darum gegeben,
docli mit dem Geding, dass die kbnigliclie Wiirde in
einem oder zwei Jahren keinem andern desselben
Pfeffer oder Ware ndher \billiger\ denn um 24 Dukaten
geben soil, und so einer den andern gesteigert, dass die
Spezerei, so erstlich um 18 Dukaten erlangt werden
mochte, itzund [jetzt] in Portugal iiber 34 Dukaten
kauft wird. Und ist also schier noch e ins ten [ez'nma/]

250 GERMAN SOCIETY.

so Jener geivorden als es vorher gewesen. Dergleichen
mit andern Spezereien auch geschehen ist, davan
solchen Kaufleuten nichts gelegen, nock sie einigen Ver-
lust, sondern grossen iiberschwdnglicJien Gcwinnhaben
dieweil sie wiederum, so Jener sie wollen, geben mogen,
und sonst niemand im heiligen ReicJie dieselbe haben
oder bekommen mag. Was Schatzung und Nachteil
den meisten bis auf den mindesten daraus erfolgt, ist
niclit schwer zu gedenken. Man kann dies aus den
Nilrnberger Spezerei =• Reisen beweisen. Der libchste
Saffra, so katlielonisch Ort Saffra genannt wird, hat
vor etlichen Jakren, als ndmlich im 16, dritthalb
Gulden seeks Kreuser ge sol ten ; jetzt kostet er, im 22
JaJir, filnfkalb Gulden 15 Kreuzer. Der beste
Saffran, so von den Kaufleuten Zymer genannt wird,
kat pro Pfund 1516-1519 2 Gulden und nock 1521 2
Gulden 24-26 Kreuzer gegotten, jetzt gilt er 4 Gulden ;
ebenso sind alle Saffrane, arragonischer, polnischer,
averniscker aufzestiegen, n. s. w.

Die Kaufleute schlagen auch nicht mit allem auf
einmal auf, sondern jetzt mit Saffran und Ndgelien,
das eine Jahr mit Pfeffer und Ingiver, dann nock mit
Muskatblut n. s. ^v., damit ihr Vorteil nicht verstanden
werden soil. Man will deshalb eine Erhebung anstellen,
ivie viel Spezerei jahrlich nach Deutschland gebracht
wird, damit man weiss, so die Kaufleute auf ein jedes
Pfund einen kleinen Anschlag macken, was es in solch
grosser Meuge tut, und damit abnehmen kann, was ein
Zoll auf diese Spezerei ertriige. Man hat auch schon
von Kaufleuten sick Angaben machene las sen, welche
aber abweichend war en, dock werden die Ziffern

APPENDIX A. 251

genannt fiir die Spezereien, welche allein jdhrlich aus
Lissabon eingehen, damit man bessere Erkundigung
einziehen konne. 36,000 Centner Pfeffer und nicht
chantnter ; die dariiber ; 2400 Centner Ingwer ; auf
IOOO Ballen Saffran kommen allein von Lissabon, ohne
das was von Venedig kommt. Der andern Spezereien
wisseti sie keine Summe anzuzeigen. Geuaueres kann
man in A ntwerpen vennittelst des dort erhobenen Zolls
erfahren.

Die Gesellschaften haben es besonders auf die
Waren abgesehen, deren man am wenigsten geraten
\entb ehren\ mag ; und wenn eine nicht reich genug ist,
so nimmt sie eine andere zu Hilfe und beide bringen
dann die betreffende Ware gans in ihre Hand. Wenn
ein armer kleiner Kaufmann von ihnen dieselbe auf-
gezurgene Ware kaufen und dann die Ware andern-
falls seiner Nahrung nach vertreiben will, so sind ihm
gedachte grosse Hnntierungen von stund an auf dem
Nacken, haben den Uberschwall derselben Ware,
konnen sie wohlfeiler, auch auf langem Burgk [Borg]
hingeben ; damit wird dieser A rmer bedrangt, kommt
zu Schaden und etliche zu Verderb. Manchmal
kaufen sie auch ihnen ihre Waren durch urkundliche
\unbekante\ Personen, dock nicht ihnen zu gut, wieder
ab ; das schajft, dass sie schier an alien Orten im
ganzen Europa ihre Gelager halten ; Ursach das ist
der Pracht des grossen Haubtgutz.

Die grossen Gesellschaften mindern die Hantierung
und Zehrung in den Landen. Sie richten alles uber
Land und in Brief en aus ; wo jetzt eine grosse Gesell-
schaft ist, da ndhrten sick sonst wohl 20 oder mehr,

252 GERMAN SOCIETY.

die alle webern und wandeln muss ten, weil sie keine
Lager und Diener an andern Orten halten konnten.
Dadurch wurden die Strassen gebaut, Zollund Geleit
gemehrt, desgleichen wie Wirte und alle Handwerk
des Nutzens und Geniessen empfinden ; denn viel

Verkaufer bringen gut Kauf und Wohlfeilheit der

Waren.

Weiter kommt die gute goldene und silberne Miinz
durch die Gesellschaften, ivelche sie ilberall aufkaufen
und einwechseln, ausser Landes, Binnen kurzer Zeit
wird aus weit gesuchtem Eigennutz Rheinisch Gold
ausgewechselt, verfilhrt und verschmelzt sein. Des-
halb sind auch schon in etlichen Stddten Empb'rungen
des gemainen Mannes entstanden, was, wo es nicht
abgewendet wird, nock wetter und mehr zu besorgen
ist.

Man fragt sich II., sollen deshalb alle Gesell-
schaften abgetan werden ? Das die grossen geld-
mdchtigen Gesellschaften zu vertrennen und nicht zu
dulden sind ist die Ursach oben angezeigt. Deshalb
sollen aber nicht alle Gesellschaften und versammelte
Hantierungen gdnzlich abgeschnitten sein ; war zvider
gemeinen Nutzen, auch ganzer deutscher Nation sehr
hoch beschwerlich, nachteilig und verfdchtlich ; dann
daraus wiirde folgen (i) dass man Franzosen und
dussen Nationen Starke, Hilf und Handreichung
gabe, dasjenige filr zu nehmen und zu treiben, das man
jetzt so hoch beschwerlich abzutun filrhat. Diese
fremden Nationen ivilrden das ganze deutsche Land
dann aussangen. (2) VVenn ferner alle allein Jiandeln
wurden und einem Schaden entstiinde, so wiirde ihm

APPENDIX A. 253

das zum Verderben gereichen, und auch denen, welche
ihm das Ihre anvertraut hat ten. Das kann nicht
geschehen, wo mehrere Personen mit Massich verei-
nigen. (3) Wiirde ein solches Verbot allein den Reichen
zum Vorteil dienen, welche ohnehin allenthalben die
Korner fur sich zichen und die Sprei den andern
lassen. Von diesen Reichen sind einige so gestellt,
dass sie eben dasjenige zu tun vermochten, was jetzt
grosse G esellschaften tun und was man filr so herb
beschwerlich achtet. Damit wilrde der Sache nicht
geholfen, sondern ihr nur ein Deckel aufgesetzt sein.
(4) Hantierung und Gewerb bringen es mit sich, dass
man die Ware nicht bios an einem Orte suchen muss ;
dazu ist eine einzige Person nicht im Stande, und
namentlich nicht zu der Zeit, wo es etwa Notdurft ist.
Die Folge ware, dass man dem Handel das Land
verbieten, fremden Nationen Nutzen scJiaffen, die
Deutschen aber drucken und bb'sern wiirde. Dieuer
aber anzunchmen und solche an seiner Statt an andere
Orte zu schicken erfordert Geld, und kleine Hauptgiiter
ertragen kaum das Halten von Knechten ; viele
kb'nnen sich selbst nicht, zu geschweigen Dieuer,
hinbringen.

III. Welche Vorschldge sind nun zur Ablehnung
gemeldeter verbotener, baser Verkan zu machen ?

(1) Es sollen G esellschaften oder sondere Personen
nur bis zu 20,000, 40,000 oder zum meisten 50,000
Gulden Hauptgut zum Handel gebrauchen und nicht
mehr als drei Lager ausserhalb ihrer hduslichen

Wohnung haben.

(2) Sie sollen gehalten sein, bei ihren leiblichen ge-

254 GERMAN SOCIETY.

schworenen Eidespflichten ihrer Obrigkeit anzusagen,
dass sie nicht mehr Geld im Handel haben.

(3) Dieses Hauptgut darf nicht durch Gewinn
vermehrt werden ; vielmehr muss Idngstens alle zwei

Jahre Rechnung getan und der Gewinn verteilt, auch
der Oberkeit davon Anzeige gemacht werden, dass die
Rechnung und A usteilung erfolgt ist.

(4) Es darf zu Handelszweckenkein Geld um Zins-
kauf entlehut werden, da dies ungottlich und wucher-
lich, auch gemeineni Nutzen nachteilig und schddlich
ist, ohne Wagnis Gewinns und Verlusts Geld oder
Zins zu nehmen oder zu geben.

(5) Keinerlei Ware darf in erne Hand gebracht
werden.

(6) Zertrennte Gesellschaften dilrfen sich nicht
vereinigen, bei Verlierung aller ihrer Gilter.

(7) Kein Kaufmann darf auf einen Kauf mehr
ilber 100 Centner Pfeffer, 100 Centner Ingwer und
von keinerlei Speserei, wie die Namenhat, iiber 50
Centner Kauf en, auch nach solchem Kauf in einem
Vierteljahr derselben Ware keine mehr fuhren oder
Kaufen.

(8) Nachdem von den grossen Gesellschaften eine
sondere Behendigkeit gebraucht wird, dieweil sie in
vielen Landeti ihr Wissen haben, wann die Waren
verderben oder in Aufschlag kommen, so madien sie

fremde Kaujieute, die andern, so solche Waren haben,
abkaufen, und bringen dieselben zu ihr en Handen, ehe
die andern sole/is Schadens gewahr werden. Daraus

folgt dann ein grosser Aufschlag der Ware. Dag en
setzt man am besten die Strafe, dass, so sich ein solcher

APPENDIX A. 255

gefdhrlicher Verkauf in vier Wochen den ndchsten
darnach erfunden, dass dann der Abkdufer soil ver-
pflichtet sein, dem Verkauf er seine Ware um das halbe
Kaufgeld wieder zuzustellen, wezl er es ihm abgekauft
hat der andere halbe Teil der Kaufsumme soil dann
der Obrigkeit v erf alien sein.

(9) Bei Strafe des Verlusts der Gilter, wie in Koln
bestimmt zvorden zsf, darf der Verkauf er die Be-
dingung nicht mac/ten, dass der Kdufer die Ware
nicht ndher \billiger\ geben dilrfe.

(10) Damit nicht fremde Nationen geheilt tind
gebessert, aber das deutsche Land beswungen und
verderbt werden, ist bedacht, dass diese Ordnung auck
alle Fremden, die Lager ini Reiche haben, binden soil.
So indent ein Walch [ Welscher\, Franzos oder wer er
sei, im heiligen Reich hantierte und in dieser Ordnung
begriffen, soil und muss er alle Strafen ^vandeln und
kehren, ^vie andere inlandische ilberfahrende Kaufleute.
Dass soil alle Fiirstentiimer, Herschaften und Stadte,
ob die gleich indem dafiir gefreiet war en, auch beflissen
und binden, damit es gegen mdnniglich gleicJi gehalten
und niemand hierin geschont iverde.

( 1 1 ) Durch das Fahren deutschcr Kaufleute nach
Portugal entsteht grosser Schaden, weil in Lissabon
ivegen der ScJiiffung von Portugal nach Indien mit
Spezerei und anderem die grossen Niederlagen und
tapfersten Kaufe und Gewerbe sind, die sonst mindert
an einigen Orten bestehen Kb'nnten, und deshalb dort
die grossen Zoll Schatzung von allerlei Spezereien und

Waren, die von dannen weggefiihrt werden, der
gleichen auch von der Pfennigwerten [ Verkauf sartikeln\

256 GERMAN SO CIE T Y.

die sie in Portugal selbst verbrauchen und nicht
geraten, mbgen als die wieder hinein in India und an
den Ort geschifft werden, aufkommen. Dazu muss
alle Ware, welche von Portugal kommt, von Deutschen
auf der See gewagt und aufs Glilcksrad gebunden
werden, und die Fahrt nach Portugal ut schier mehr
sorglich und gefdhrlich als die nach Indien ; in wenig
Jahren sind auf derselben See ilber 1,500,000 Gulden
Wert ertrunken und verdorben, und trotzdem sind die
Kaufleute, welche wenig ererbt haben, so unausprechlich
reich geworden. Deshalb soil alle Schiffung nach
Portugal verboten werden ; die Portugiesen sollen
selbst das Wagnis ilbernehmen und ihre Ware, die sie
dock nicht behalten kb'nnen, nach Deutschland bringen ;
wenn man ihnen so nicht nachlduft, werden sie auch
billiger verkaufen milssen. Andere bemerken nun
freilich, dass wenn die Portugiesen auch die Ware nach
Antorff [Antwerperi\ bringen, so wilrden die grossen
Gesellschaften auch dort Wege finden, die War en
aufzukaufen ; auch kbnne der Kbnig von Portugal
bewogen werden, die Ware nach Danzig oder Egen
Merten {Aigues Mortes\ in Frankreich zu schaffen, so
dass die Deutschen sie dort holen miissten. Allein
andere zeigen an, dass er wegen des Zugangs der
Metalle Deutschland nicht entbehren und ohne die-
selben gegen India nichts schaffen kbnnte ; man dilrfe
ihm also nur den Zugang der Metalle versperren, so
werde man ihn zwingen kbnnen, nicht nach Frankreich
zu handeln.

(12) Soil eine Satzung etlicher Warenvorgenommen
werden, damit nicht bios fiir die gemeinen Hantierer

APPENDIX A. 257

tind Kanfleute gesorgt ist, sondern auch fur die, so diese
War en zu Hirer Niessungund Gebrauch kaufen. Es ist
zu besorgen, dass auch die getrennten Gesellschaften sick
heimlich iiber die Preise verstdndigen ; auch hat der
Konig von Portugal die Spezerei allein in seiner
Gewalt, und seither kann er Preise setzen wie er will,
weil sie bei den Deutschen wegen keiner Verteuerung
ungekauft blieben. Auch ist von Refel \Reval] und
Liibeck angezeigt worden, dass der Konig von Ddne-
mark und die Fucker miteinander in Handlung stehen,
dass alle Kaufmann giiter, so seither aus der Muscey
\_Moskati\ in deutsche Handelsstddte kommen, filrder
nacJi Danemark und in des Kb'nigs und der Fucker
Gewalt kommen sollen, damit sie dieselben nach Gef alien
verteuern konnen. Bisher hat man solcJie Dinge nicht
mit rechter Peen gestraft, sondern wissiglicJi geduldet.
Dem kann nur ein Verbot ablielfen, dass die und die
Waren in Deutschland nicht hoher als su eineui
bestimmten Satz verkauft werden dilrften. Das Regi-
ment soil eine jede Ware den Z,eutner auf eine
Hauptsumme taxieren. Als Mass stab sollen die
gewohnlichen Mittelpreise gelten, wie sie bestanden
haben, ehe die Waren in die Gezvalt des Konigs von
Portugal und der grossen schddlichen verbotenen Gesell-
scJiaften kamen. Man wendet freilich ein ; wenn die
Waren missraten ? Dann werden die Kaufleute sicli
bei den wohlgeratenen erholen. Wenn Mangel an
sole/ten Waren entsteht? Die Fremden konnen
unser Geld gar viel iveniger entbehren, als wir Hire
Waren ; deshalb ist im Reicli kein langwieriger
schddlicJier Mangel zu besorgen; man wollt denn

258 GERMAN SOCIETY.

unniltz Geld ausgeben fur einen Mangel acJiten.
Durch solche Satzung wird die Gefahr iibermdssiger
Steigerung der Preise am besten verhiitet werden. Bei
den Taxen kann die Entlegenheit der Orter in Betracht
gezogen werden auch die Verschiedenheit der Ellen und
Gewichte ; so wird der Pfeffer an der Hand in Frank-
furt das Pfund auf i Kreuzer taxiert, ebenso in Niirn-
berg. Die Taxe soil ein halbes Jahr nach Beschliessung
durch die Reichsstdnde angehen.

Weiter soil nicht sein, dass die Kaufleute dem armen
Volke auf den Samen, so nock auf dem Feld steht,
auf die Trauben an den Stb'cken und andere Frucht
Geld leihen ; dadurcJi diesen armen notdilrftigen Lenten
das genommen wird, was sie hdrtiglich erarbeiten.

Darauf folgen Strafen filr alle Uberfahrer, fur die
lassigen Obrigkeiten ; die Erlaubnis, dass jeder Fiskal
klagen darf ; die Bestimmung, dass alle konfiszierten
G liter half tig dem Reichsfiskus ; half tig der Obrigkeit
zu fallen sollen, darunter solche Verbrechen geschehen.
Der Fiskal soil auch gegen die Gesellschaften, welche
sich seither offenbar widerrechlich bereichert haben,
vorgehen ; geschicht dies, so wird das nicht allein den
Fiskus speisen, sondern auch andere warnen ; sich vor
dergleichen baser Beschddigung zu hilten. Die Ord-
nung, betreffend den Verkauf u. s. w. soil zivei Monate
nach Hirer Verkilndigung angehen.

1st auch bewogen, dass Befriedung der Strassen
dem Kaufmannsgewerb filrtrdglich set, damit alle
Hantierer auf des heiligen Reichs Strassen sicherer,
dann etliche Zeit her geschehen ist, webern und ziehen
mb'gen.

APPENDIX A. 259

Es kommt vor, dass etliche Kaufleute betriiglich ini
Schein Trauens und Glaubens den Lenten das Ihre neh-
men dtirch Bankrottieren, was einem Diebstahlvergleich-
bar ist, und wer andere filrsatzlich an Geld und Gut
ansetzt soil streng gestr aft wer den.

Endlich werden Reiclismasse und- Gewichte gefordert,
fur Falschung der Tucker und Waren eine strengliche
Handhabung verlangt und die Stande gewarnt, gegen
arglistige und erkaufte Prokurei auf der Hut zu sein,
wodurch diese Ordnung von den Gesellschaften
bekampft werden kann. (N.B. — Gemeint ist, nach
finer Notiz von andrer Hand, Bestechung der Obrig-
keiten, um durch ihren favor und patrocinium den
Folgen dieser Ordnung zu entgehen.}

APPENDIX B.

TEN closely printed folio pages of Sebastian Franck's
Chronica (published in 1531) are taken up with a
seemingly exhaustive narrative of the incident referred
to in the text; albeit Franck himself tells us that it
only represents a small portion — the " kernel," as he
expresses it — of what he had prepared, and indeed
actually written, on the subject, the bulk of which,
however, the exigencies of space compelled him to
suppress.

" In the year 1509," says Franck, "the two Orders
of the ' Preachers ' (Dominicans) and ' Barefooted
Friars ' (Franciscans) did wax hot against one another
concerning the conception of Mary. The 'Barefooted'
did hold that she was pure from all original sin and
spotless ; the ' Preachers,' that she was conceived in
original sin even as other children of men. Now
there was much debate thereon, and at Heidelberg
was there a disputation. ... In the end came it to
pass that the ' Preachers ' (Dominicans) did devise to
further their matter and opinion with false signs and
wonders."

A certain Dominican preacher, Wigandus by name,
who had written a book against the Immaculate
Conception, advised resort to trickery. The sugges-
tion was adopted in a full Chapter of the Order held

(260)

APPENDIX B. 261

at Wimpfen in 1506. Niirnberg and Frankfort were
thought of as suitable places, but on consideration
were rejected on the ground that the townsfolk of
these two commercial centres were too sharp-witted.
Eventually, Bern was decided upon. Accordingly,
four Dominicans, the Prior, the sub-Prior, the chief
preacher and another monk, connected with a foun-
dation possessed by the Order at that place, were
instructed to set about the business. They got
hold of a young journeyman tailor, who applied
to be received into the Order, and whom they
admitted with apparent reluctance on payment of
fifty-three gulden, besides the gift of some damascene
and silk. As soon as they had him well in hand,
they began to test his credulity by playing practical
jokes on him at night — by throwing things into
his cell, making mysterious noises and the like, pre-
tending that it was the work of a spirit. At last
the Prior came one night enveloped in a white linen
sheet, and with horrible noises and gestures seized
the trembling novice as he lay in his bed. The latter,
of course, screamed and invoked the Mother of God.
Upon this, the ghost adjured him, alleging that he
and his colleagues could render him inestimable aid
if they would but scourge themselves for eight days
in succession, and read eight masses in the chapel of
St. John. With this the spectre left him.

The youth next day told everything in an agony
of fear. The chief preacher of the Order, Dr. Steffan,
improved the occasion by an harangue against the
Franciscans, declaringthat no distressed spirit ever held

262 GERMAN SOCIETY.

parley with such unmitigated scoundrels as they were,
or sought the aid of such notorious evil-livers. Finally,
he succeeded in stirring up a strong feeling in the
town against the rival Order.

The four conspiring monks having tested the
silly youth, and rinding him staunch in his belief,
exhorted him to be of good courage the following
night, the Prior having purified his cell with holy
water and guarded it with relics. But the spirit came
again ; and on being interrogated, in accordance with
instructions given to the novice, the ghost declared
itself the soul of a former Prior of the monastery, who
had been deposed for loose living, had left the cloister
in lay attire, had become involved in a "bad business,"
and had been stabbed to death in a brawl unshrived.
The spirit went on to extol the Dominican Order at
the expense of the Franciscans, who would shortly,
it predicted, be the ruin of the town of Bern.

Visions of a similar character occurred on the
following nights. The preacher, Dr. Steffan, en-
trusted the novice with a letter containing leading
questions favourable to the Order which he was to
endeavour to get delivered to the Mother of God, and
return with the answers affixed. The letter was
subsequently found deposited miraculously in the
pyx, and sprinkled with blood said to be of Christ,
and sealed with the same. The letter was the
following day laid with great pomp on the high altar.
The next night one of the four monks appeared
to the novice, dressed as the Virgin, with ex-
uberant praises of the Order, and with instructions

APPENDIX B. 263

to implore the Holy Man, Pope Julius II., to institute
a festival in honour of the " spotted conception " of
the Virgin, promising at the same time to convey to
him a cross with three spots of the blood of her Son
upon it, as a testimony of the truth of her having
been born in original sin. She gave him a cloth
soaked in blood from the wound in the side, and
other relics. She further pierced the guileless
youth's hand with a pin, and made him call out,
comforting him with the assurance that the wound
would reopen afresh twice a year — on Good Friday
and Corpus Christi Day. Thereupon the monk-
Virgin disappeared.

All things had gone successfully up to this time,
and the four monks now decided to officially an-
nounce the novice as an inspired person. To this end
they succeeded — " by magical practices," says Franck
— in preparing a water which deprived the new
Brother of his senses, and another water which, while
in this state, they rubbed into his hands and feet,
producing wounds. With a third water they caused
him to wake up — delighted to see the new miracles
worked upon him. They then gave him a special
room to himself, where the " faithful laity " might see
him ; but no one was allowed to speak to him, for
fear of his compromising the Order.

Meanwhile these things began to be noised abroad
and were eagerly discussed, everybody wishing to get
a sight of the new god. At length the long-suffering
novice, on another visitation, recognised the voice of
the Prior in the sham Virgin, and drawing a knife,

264 GERMAN SOCIETY.

stabbed him in the right hip, after which the Prior,
seizing a dish from the wall, flung it at the novice
and decamped. No blandishments or warnings from
the sub-Prior or other monks would induce the now
disillusionised novice to allow himself to be made a
fool of any longer. Finding this side of the business
at an end, they next entreated him with promises not
to ruin himself and them, but to throw in his lot with
them and consent to hoodwink the people. He, at
length, agreed with some reluctance. Then they in-
structed him in the role he was to play. He was to
represent an image of the Virgin in the Lady Chapel,
whilst Dr. Stefifan was to be concealed behind a
curtain, and, speaking through a tube, to personify her
" Divine Son ". The " Son " asked the " Mother " why
she wept. The "Mother" answered that she wept
because her commands had not been carried out fully
as yet. In the meantime some old women, who had
been admitted into the chapel, rushed away spread-
ing the report everywhere that the image of the Virgin
had wept and spoken. A large concourse assembled
in the chapel, amongst them being the four monks,
who affected great astonishment. Presently the Bur-
germeister with three other high civic functionaries
arrived, and demanded of the Prior and monks what
was the meaning of the great commotion. The Prior
replied that the Virgin had wept for the approaching
ruin of the whole town of Bern, because it was re-
ceiving a pension from the French king, and because
it tolerated in its midst the Franciscans with their
wicked heresy of the Immaculate Conception, whereby

APPENDIX B. 265

they imputed to her an honour that did not belong
to her and which she repudiated. The elders of the
city thought it a remarkable occurrence, and looked
grave.

The monks now thought to give the novice, the
alleged intermediary of so many divine messages, a
poisoned sacrament in the presence of the people, so
that he might die suddenly, and that they might thus
gain two points — be rid of a dangerous witness, and
supply their Order with a saint, whom Christ had
taken to Himself during the reception of the Holy
Elements. But our novice declined the wafer with
the red spots, which was offered him, and which was
alleged to be sprinkled with the blood of Christ ; and
insisted on partaking of a less miraculous-looking one.
Nevertheless, the monks did not give up their project,
for the novice overheard the next night a secret con-
clave of the four as to the best way of getting rid of
him, whether they should starve him, drown him,
strangle him, run him through the body, or choke
him. He now began to feel seriously anxious, more
especially as he found his rations diminishing daily.
Accordingly, one day he crept out of his cell and
followed one of the four monks into the refectory,
where he saw them eating capons and drinking wines
with girls, who, to his intense disgust, he observed
wore dresses made of the very damascene and silk
he had contributed to the monastery on his initia-
tion. His presence was detected, and Dr. Steffan tried
to pass the girls off as sisters of his own. The monks
thought, notwithstanding, that it was high time " to

266 GERMAN SOCIETY.

leave their damnable faces and begin ". So they
gave the novice cabbage stewed in a solution of
crushed spiders, but this did him no harm. They
then tried it on a cat, which died. The Prior next
brought him a poisoned soup, which he did not eat
but threw away. Five young wolves kept in the
monastery thereupon ate it and died. Then they
tried the sacrament trick again, forcing it into his
mouth, but he threw it up on to a footstool, which the
worthy Sebastian assures us immediately began to
sweat blood. This alarmed the conspirators, and they
changed their tactics, chaining the youth up, fettling
him in various parts of the body with hot irons, until
he swore a solemn oath not to divulge anything. At
last, says Sebastian, the matter " became too heavy
for the Brother," and he resolved to escape at once.
He succeeded in doing so by cunning and stealth,
and rushing into the town he informed everybody he
met of all that had happened. The authorities, how-
ever, were unwilling to lay violent hands on a spiritual
Order.

The monks, on their side, lost no time in sending
their preacher and the sub-Prior to Rome, in order
to get the Pope's attestation of their story. They
were supported by the whole influence of the
Dominican Order throughout Central Europe. The
Rath of Bern then also sent to Rome to demand an
impartial judge for the matter, and Pope Julius II.
nominated a commission consisting of three priests
and a Dominican Provincial. The latter, being seen
by one of the bishops admonishing Dr. Steffan how

APPENDIX B. 267

to act, was removed from the court, and died at
Constance from vexation. The four monks were
then placed on the rack, and revealed everything.
The poor novice was also given a few turns on the
rack, in order to make sure that he had told all he
knew. He rehearsed everything, including the story
of the girls.

It came out in the course of the trial that Jews'
blood, nineteen hairs from the black eyebrow of a
Jew child, and other ingredients, which our modest
Sebastian informs us " it were not seemly to tell of,"
went to constitute the magical decoction that the monks
had used in order to make the novice subservient to
them. It was found also that the sub-Prior had
stolen five hundred gulden from the monastic chest,
and that the other monks had taken the precious
stones from the image of the Virgin and disposed
of them, also that the Prior had boasted that he could
work his will with any woman on whom he laid his
hand.

The bishops wanted to transfer the matter to
Rome, but the lay authorities would not hear of this,
and insisted on the court being reinforced by eight
honourable councillors of the city. In the end the
ecclesiastics consented to reconstitute the court in
this form. The result was a sentence of degradation
and burning alive on all four monks. The exe-
cution was carried out in the presence of a large
concourse of people in the great market-place of the
city of Bern, on the 3ist of May, 1509.

As intimated in the body of this work, the foregoing

268 GERMAN SOCIETY.

affair caused a profound impression over a wide area,
affecting as it did the honour and integrity of so
powerful an Order as that of the " Preachers " or
Dominicans, and it made the city and canton of
Bern an easy prey to the reforming tendencies which
came in vogue a few years later.

The following is another illustration of the ready
credulity of a mediaeval populace and the excessive
excitability of the public mind in the earlier years of
the sixteenth century. I quote, this time literally,
from another portion of Sebastian Franck's Chronica :

"Anno 1516, Dr. Balthasar Hubmeyer [at this
time Hubmeyer was still a Catholic] did preach with
vehemence against the Jews at Regensburg, showing
how great an evil doth arise to the whole German
nation, not alone from their faith, but also from their
usury, and how unspeakable a tribute their usury
doth bear away withal. Then was there a Council
held that they should pray the Emperor to the end
that Jews might be driven forth. Therefore did they
[the people] break their synagogue in pieces, also
many of their houses, and did build in the place
thereof a Temple in honour of Mary, to which they
gave the name of The Fair Mary. This did some
visit privily, and told that from that hour was their
prayer fulfilled. So soon, therefore, as the matter
became noised abroad, even then was there a running
from all parts thither, as though the people were
bewitched, of wife, of child, of gentlemen, some
spiritual, some worldly, they coming so long a way, it

APPENDIX B. 269

might be having eaten nothing. Certain children
who knew not the road did come from afar with a
piece of bread, and the people came with so manifold
an armoury, even such as it chanced that each had,
the while he was at his work, the one with a milking-
pail, the other with a hay-fork. Some there were that
had scarce aught on in the greatest cold, wherewithal
to cover them in barest need. Some there were that
did run many miles without speaking, as they might
be half-possessed or witless ; some did come barefoot
with rakes, axes and sickles ; these had fled from the
fields and forsaken their lords ; some earned in a
shirt they had by chance laid hands on as they arose
from their bed ; some did come at midnight ; some
there were that ran day and night ; and there was in
all such a running from all lands that, in the space of
but one day, many thousands of men had come in.

" One there was that saw miracles from so much
and so divers silver, gold, wax, pictures and jewels
that were brought thither. There were daily so many
masses read that one priest could scarce but meet the
other, as he departed from the altar. When one did
read the Communion [Commun], the other even then
did kneel before the altar with his Confiteor. These
things came to pass daily till well-nigh beyond noon,
and although many altars were set up both within
and without the Temple, yet nevertheless could not
one priest but encounter the other.

"The learned did sing many Carmina in praise of
Fair Mary, and many and divers offices were devised
of signs, of pipes and of organs. Much sick folk did

270 GERMAN SOCIETY.

they lead and bear thither, and also, as some do believe,
dead men whom they brought home again restored
and living. There befel also many great signs and
wonders, the which it would not be fitting to tell of,
and whereof an especial cheat was rumoured, in that
what any brought thither, did he but vow himself with
his offering, straightway was he healed, not alone from
his sicknesses, but the living did receive also their
dead again, the blind saw, the halt ran, did leave their
crutches in the Temple, and walked upright from
thence. Some ran thither from the war ; yea, wives
from their husbands, children from the obedience and
will of their fathers would thither, saying that they
might not remain away, and that they had no rest day
nor night.

" Some as they entered into the Temple and beheld
the image straightway fell down as though the thunder
had smote them. As the mad rabble beheld how such
did fall, they bethought them that it were the power
of God, and that each must needs fall in this place.
Thus there came to pass such a falling (such as was a
foolishness and unrestrained and of the devil's like-
ness) that well-nigh each that came to these places
did fall, and many from the rabble, who did not fall,
believed themselves to be unholy and did enforce
themselves straightway to fall, till the Council [Rath]
was moved, as they say, to forbid such, and then did
the signs and fallings cease.

" It is wondrous to relate with what strange in-
struments the people came'd thither ; as one was
seized in the midst of his labour, he took not the

APPENDIX B. 271

time to lay aside that which he held in his hand but
bore it with him, and each ran unshrived away, being
driven by his own spirit. But whether the great Holy
Spirit did move to such ill-considered tumult against
obedience, did drive the mother from the child, the
wife from the husband, the servant and the child con-
trary to the obedience to be rendered to the master
and the father, I will leave to others to determine.
Many do even believe as I do, that it cannot be the
work of God inasmuch as it is contrary to His word,
work, manner, nature and the interpretation of the
Scriptures.

" Now this running toward hath held a goodly
season, as it may be six or eight years, but hath now
ceased, albeit not wholly."

I have reproduced as literally as possible from
Franck's own language, not (as will have been noticed)
omitting or toning down the repetitions and inco-
herences of style.

APPENDIX C.

THE celebrated family of Fugger of Augsburg mi-
grated to that city about the year 13/0 from a village
near Schwabmtinchen. What their precise status
was in their original home is not very clear ; but they
would seem to have been above the rank of ordinary
peasants, and it is just possible that they may have been
Freier or freeholders of land without nobility. At all
events, they are said to have cultivated flax and hemp
somewhat extensively. The two brothers, Ulrich
and Johannes Fugger, on arriving in Augsburg, de-
voted themselves to weaving of wool and linen, and
became master-weavers, possessing several looms.
Through marriage they soon acquired the citizenship,
and the family continued to rise and flourish during
the fifteenth century. Some time before 1450, a
Fugger became Grand Master of the Weavers' Guild,
and towards the close of that century Ulrich Fugger
was one of the first to take advantage of the rising
world-market and of the dislocated feudal conditions
of the time. In 1473, he had to settle the financial
affairs of Maximilian, who wished to lend money to
Charles the Bold. For his services on this occasion
he and his brothers were ennobled, and received a
" lily " as their armorial device. Ulrich was also a
patron of Albrecht Diirer, and it was through him

that Dlirer's pictures were sent into Italy.

(272)

APPENDIX C. 273

Ulrich Fugger bought from Pope Alexander VI.
the patronage of a canonry near St. Moritz for a
thousand ducats. In 1494 he and his brother inaugu-
rated the trade syndicates spoken of in the preceding
pages by a company for trading in spices. It is re-
ferred to in the Reichstag rescript given in Appendix
A. Ulrich died in 1510, leaving seven daughters and
three sons ; his brother had already died in 1506.
They had bought up all the houses on the Weinmarkt,
and converted them into a palace, in which they lived
conjointly.

Jacob Fugger, a younger son of Ulrich, raised the
family to the zenith of its opulence and magnificence.
Originally brought up for the Church, he became a
canon; but later, on the wish of his father, he renounced
the tonsure and devoted himself to commerce. He
first went to reside in Venice, in order to get mer-
cantile training in the family warehouse which the
Fuggers had established in that city. Venice was
then, and for long afterwards, a kind of training school
for the merchants of the South German cities. Jacob
also made further journeys to the principal commer-
cial towns of Europe, the result of his studies and
travels being the expansion of his family business to
a degree previously unheard of in the annals of
mediaeval trading. To such a point did he carry his
success that soon his wool, silk and spinning business
generally, became a mere subordinate matter with
him, his chief occupations being mining and banking.
Jacob Fugger was, in fact, the first great European
capitalist, the Rothschild and Vanderbilt of his day.

18

274 GERMAN SOCIETY.

In Spain, in the Tyrol, in Hungary and in
Carinthia, he bought up lands rich in ore from derelict
and impecunious nobles, and succeeded in opening
up valuable silver, copper and lead mines. Paracelsus
mentions having visited the Fugger mines at Schwatz
in the Tyrol in connection with his alchemistic
studies. The new route to India afforded by the
discovery of the Cape Passage gave Fugger the
opportunity of showing his ability to seize a timely
advantage from changing conditions. In 1505, he
joined with the two other large commercial houses,
those of Welser and Hochstetten, in an undertaking
for shipping three cargoes of Indian wares. This
class of goods had hitherto come over land by way of
the Levant and Venice ; but now, for the first time,
they were shipped direct from the East Indies by the
new Cape route.

The previous year, 1504, Jacob and his brothers
had been ennobled by the Emperor Maximilian,
Jacob himself being made Imperial Councillor. Leo
X. further constituted him Count Palatine and Eques
Aureatus. In 1509, Jacob advanced Maximilian as
much as 170,000 ducats as a subsidy towards the cost
of the Italian War. Subsequently, on the election of
Charles V. to the Imperial dignity, he contributed
300,000 ducats to the expenses involved. On one
occasion, when he entertained Charles V. as a guest
in his palace on the Weinmarkt in Augsburg, he
burnt the overdue " acceptances " of the Emperor on
a large fire of cinnamon, at that time one of the most
costly spices.

APPENDIX C. 275

The Fuggers acquired in the shape of fallen-
in mortgages several feudal territories, comprising
numerous villages. In fact, by their financial opera-
tions alone, apart from their enormous mercantile
transactions, the family amassed an immense fortune.
Jacob enlarged the great Fugger palace already
referred to, and added a sumptuous choir to the
Augsburg church of St. Anna. He also founded the
" Fuggerei," an entire quarter of Augsburg still
extant, to be used as almshouses for poor citizens.
He died in 1525, leaving as his heirs his two nephews
Raimond and Anton.

Residing together in the Fugger palace, they
still further added to the renown of their family
by their patronage of the new learning and the
fine arts. They took a distinguished place as
patricians in the Rath of their native city, and they
were raised by Charles V. into the ranks of the
higher nobility as hereditary counts of the Empire,
being also granted lands with hereditary jurisdiction.
By their operations in finance, they still further
increased the territorial acquisitions of their family.
All contemporary writers descant on the pomp and
magnificence of the Fugger establishment. The
family continued to flourish up to the Thirty Years'
War, in which they played a considerable part on
the Imperial Catholic side. The history of the
Fuggers, of their enrichment by gigantic mercantile
operations on the basis of the world-market, of the
new developments they gave to the time-old practice
of money lending, and of the fresh energy and im-

276 GERMAN SOCIETY.

proved methods employed in their mining enter-
prises, affords a typical instance of the birth and
rapid growth of the new constructive principle of
capitalism — a birth and growth taking place part
passu with the destructive processes of the dis-
integration of Feudalism.

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